SOME 

SOLDIER 

POETS 


By 

T.  STURGE 

MOORE 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 

POETRY 

1899.  THE  VINEDRESSER  AND  OTHER  POEMS 

1901.  APHRODITE  AGAINST  ARTEMIS 

1903.  ABSALOM 

1903.  DANAE 

1905.  THE  LITTLE  SCHOOL 

1906.  POEMS 
1911.  MARIAMNE 

1911.  A  SICILYAN  IDYLL 

1914.  THE  SEA  IS  KIND 
PROSE 

1899.  THE  CENTAUR  AND  THE  BACCHANT  FROM 

THE  FRENCH  BY  MAURICE  DE  GUERIN 

1900.  ALTDORFER 

1904.  DURER 
1906.  CORREGGIO 

1910.  ART  AND  LIFE  (FLAUBERT  AND  BLAKE) 

1915.  HARK  TO  THESE  THREE 


SOME 
SOLDIER  POETS 

BY 

T.  STURGE  MOORE 


NEW   YORK 
HARCOURT,  BRACE   AND   HOWE 

1920 


printed  in  great  britain  bv  the  kiveksidb  press  limited 
■  •    .  ■  .  '.    .'ediupcruh 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

INTRODUCTION               ....         7 

JULIAN  GRENFELL       . 

.       13 

RUPERT  BROOKE 

21 

A  HALF  PLEIADE 

27 

R.  E.  \^RNEDE 

45 

SORLEY   . 

55 

FRANCIS  LEDWIDGE     . 

69 

EDWARD  THOMAS 

77 

F.  W.  HAR\^Y  . 

87 

RICHARD  ALDINGTON 

95 

ALAN  SEEGER     . 

107 

THE  BEST  POETRY       . 

119 

426177 


NOTE 

Gratf.i  ri,  ackno-wlodgnicnt  is  due  to  the  courtesy  with 
whicli  authors  or  tlicir  representatives  and  their  pub- 
lisliers  liave  most  generously  permitted  me  to  quote — 
Lord  Desborougli  from  JuHan  Grenfell's  poem  ;  Mr 
l^hvard  Marsh  and  Messrs  Sidgwiek  &  Jaekson  from 
Rupert  Brooke's  poems  ;  Captains  Siegfried  Sassoon  and 
Rolicrt  Graves,  Lieutenants  Robert  Nichols  and  Richard 
Aldington  and  Mr  Laurence  Binyon  from  their  own 
poems ;  Bishop  Frodsham  from  those  of  Lieutenant 
Harvey,  then  a  prisoner  ;  Professor  W.  R.  Sorley  from 
Captain  Sorley's,  Mrs  Edward  Thomas  and  Mrs  R.  E. 
Vernede  from  their  husbands'  poems.  Lord  Dunsany  and 
Mr  Herbert  Jenkins  from  those  of  Francis  Ledwidge,  and 
JMr  Charles  Louis  Seeger  and  Messrs  Constable  from  Alan 
Seeger's  poems. 


INTRODUCTION 

These  essays  are  occasional.  They  are  incomplete  and 
tentative,  as  must  be  every  reply  to  a  fortuitous  demand. 
I  have  not  chosen  my  themes  by  any  deep  affinity  or 
because  I  had  a  native  bent  for  studying  them,  but 
because  they  were  thiiist  before  me  and  some  of  my 
thoughts  flocked  out  to  meet  each. 

I  sketched  characters  based  on  analysis  of  work,  not 
on  information  about  authors,  yet  have  since  learned  that 
some  of  these  literarj^  portraits  seemed  good  likenesses 
to  the  friends  of  the  man  portrayed,  and  the  friends  of 
other  poets  have  desired  to  see  their  literary  characters 
sketched  by  me. 

Young  poets  are  old-fashioned,  like  Nature  herself ; 
they  have  usually  not  yet  acquired  the  professional  desire 
to  be  in  advance  of  the  public.  Nothing  seems  haclcneyed 
to  genius,  and  youth  is  perhaps  half  genius. 

What  a  work  is  not  is  always  more  obvious  than  what 
it  is,  as  critics  are  never  weary  of  proving.  I  have  tried 
to  build  with  positive  qualities,  and  to  obtain  relief  by 
laying  on  shadows  lightly,  as  the  best  topographical 
draughtsmen  did  their  pearly  washes  of  diluted  Indian 
ink. 

What  is  poetry  ?  Why  are  so  many  young  people 
tempted  to  try  their  hands  at  it  ?  Wrong  answers  to 
these  questions  are  naturally  more  numerous  and  fashion- 
able than  right  answers.  But  we  can  never  see  poetry  in 
relation  to  national  life  until  we  get  hold  of  right  answers. 
Poetiy  is  a  creation  or  discovery  in  the  use  of  words 
that  wakes  or  strengtl  ens  emotion  in  us,  thus  enlarging 
consciousness.  The  poet  is  not  full  of  emotions  and  per- 
ceptions that  need  expressing,  as  a  vat  is  full  of  grapes, 
though  no  doubt  human  nature — complete,  ideal — is 
latent  in  him.  He  is,  like  all  young  creatures,  playful. 
He  plays  with  language,  attracted  by  its  beauties  and 

7 


INTRODUCTION 

possibilities,  and  in  doing  so  he  does  for  himself  what 
afterwards  his  poems  do  for  us— he  awakens  or  creates 
emotions  in  his  heart  that  it  knew  little  or  nothing  of 
before,  and  as  he  continues  he  clarifies,  strengthens  and 
adds  to  them. 

The  ]\hiso  is  lifrht -footed,  but  does  not,  like  Poe,  consider 
a  poem  more  essentially  poetical  for  being  short.  No,  as 
children  continue  their  Indians  and  Pirates  from  day  to 
day  and  from  one  hondays  to  another,  she  sustains  the 
poet's  interest  in  Aready  or  Babylon,  in  murderous  king 
and  incestuous  queen,  for  years  together,  and  renews  it 
from  age  to  age  ;  yet  she  often  welcomes  novel  themes. 
She  loves  to  defeat  the  'proud  limitaiy  "  theorist  who 
is  for  a  hole-in-the-corner  business,  with  one  properly 
labelled  ware  of  a  high  quality.  One  generation  having 
deified  classical  example,  she  prompts  the  next  to  scoff 
at  "  monstrous  Milton  "  ;  yet  will  very  likely  lead  the 
scoffer's  son  back  to  that  blind  man's  feet.  In  fact,  like 
children,  she  hates  a  declared  purpose ;  for  the  game  is 
best  when  the  players  forget  themselves  entirely  in  it, 
even  though  it  be  preaching,  for  then  she  loves  a  sermon. 
The  poet  is  only  a  poet  when  he  lays  aside  the  interests 
j  of  his  life  among  his  neighbours  and  shares  her  free 
absorption  over  anything  or  everything.  To  live  poetry  / 
as  Rupert  Brooke  dreamed  of  doing  is  impossible,  for/ 
though  Life  may  follow,  she  can  never  overtake  those 
immaterial  feet.  The  welfare  of  one  man,  of  one  neigh- 
bourhood, of  one  nation  or  period,  is  a  pettifogging  affair 
when  past  and  future  lie  open.  If  the  poet  treats  of  his 
own  love  he  must  be  careful  not  clearly  to  distinguish  her 
from  Helen  of  Troy,  or  should,  at  least,  give  us  the  illusion 
that  they  are  equally  real  to  him.  That  is  why  failure  in 
love  and  war  is  so  much  more  inspiring  to  the  poet  than 
success  ;  when  the  real  world  has  rejected  a  man  he  feels 
freer  in  the  Muses'  house  ;  he  no  longer  has  any  interests 
that  conflict  with  theirs. 


INTRODUCTION 

Poetry  is  more  profound  and  significant  than  prose, 
wiser  and  weightier,  at  once  more  primitive  and  more 
refined  ;  for  the  fashion  of  this  world  passes,  but  the 
moods  of  that  remain.  They  build  with  durable,  precious 
materials  which,  though  invisible,  are  stronger  and 
tougher  than  steel,  and  more  difficult  than  radium  to 
account  for.  The  poet  is  not  the  odd  sheepish  person 
whom  his  friends  know,  but  the  worthy  playmate  of 
Polyhymnia.  In  fact  the  wider  the  difference  the  freer 
the  poet  is  from  personal  taint.  Some  "  nice  man  "  was 
Shakespeare  to  his  London,  but  our  Shakespeare  was  and 
still  is  more  imposing  than  Lord  Verulam,  yet  never 
could  be  met  in  any  street. 

What  is  poetry  ?  Why  do  youths  love  it  ?  To  read 
verse  and  watch  young  men  answers  both  questions,  but 
who  shall  sum  those  answers  up  in  words  ?  One  at  present 
fashionable  answer  may  be  worth  combating  so  as  to  set 
off  the  largeness  and  vigour  of  that  apparent  truth  which 
defeats  the  tongue.  Why  do  young  men  write  verse  ? 
They  want  to  express  themselves,  their  own  sense  of  things. 
This  answer  only  shows  how  deeply  the  fallacjr  of  impres- 
sionism has  sophisticated  modern  aesthetic  thought.  No 
one  escapes.  The  impressionist  looks  upon  his  individual 
peculiarities  as  the  source  of  value.  He  offers  to  exploit 
the  Peru  of  his  mind  for  the  benefit  of  the  world.  He 
would  work  it  with  scientific  nicety,  or  else  record  the 
whimseys  of  feeling,  seeing  and  thinking  to  which  he  is 
subject  when  most  alarmingly  unlike  other  men,  and  thinks 
thus  to  add  new  facts  to  our  knowledge,  enlarge  our  ex- 
perience. He  does,  but  Apollo  is  not  interested  in  his 
wonders  as  glimpsed  from  a  garret.  ' '  Intolerably  severe  " 
he  has  frowned  on  these  votaries  who  are  content  with 
what  they  see.  He  smiles  on  those  who,  forgetting  them- 
selves, follow  his  splendour  into  the  open.  Their  worship 
can  never  enough  divest  itself,  not  only  of  walls  and  roof, 
but  of  coat  and  shirt,  so  as  to  feel  his  glory  with  every  pore. 

9 


INTRODUCTION 

Whereas  those  others  try  to  frame  their  sense  of  him,  which 
is  small,  those  flatter  him  with  a  wholc-hcartcd  imitation, 
creating  little  gardens  with  stick  and  ink  and  paper  as 
he  creates  the  world  for  joy  with  light. 

More  minds  arc  ca])ahlc  of  an  interest  in  persons  than 
in  beauty,  as  the  a})[)etitc  for  gossi})  and  scandal  shows. 
The  impressionist  theory  was  bound  to  catch  on ;  it 
panders  to  so  common  a  weakness.  "  Know  thyself !  " 
"  Be  true  to  your  own  experience."  Yes,  but  not  because 
you  are  you,  or  it  is  yours,  but  because  you  are  not  adequate, 
it  c-iinnul  suffice,  and  to  realise  these  limits  till  they  ache 
is  to  extend  them,  throw  them  off  and  enlarge  your  life. 
The  difference  of  attitude  is  enormous,  far  more  real 
than  any  that  can  be  drawn  between  romantic  and  classical 
or  realist  and  idealist.  The  artist  never  does  express 
himself ;  but,  in  trying  to  create  objects,  a  bj'^-product  of 
mannerisms  and  shortcomings  piles  up  like  a  heap  of 
shavings,  and  this  distinguishes  his  work  from  that  of 
other  artists.  The  poet  who  is  keen  about  a  poem  and 
the  poet  who  is  anxious  about  his  reputation  are  two 
persons,  though  like  light  and  darkness  they  may  alter- 
nately occupy  the  same  room  ;  one  casts  the  other  out. 
The  master  draws  importance  from  the  masterpiece,  not 
this  from  him  :   his  glory  is  a  reflex  light  from  its  worth. 

But  do  I  not  in  sketching  these  characters  truckle  with 
this  vice  ?  A  character  is  formed  by  a  transparent  and 
elastic  envelope  of  limitations  like  a  soap-bulable  ;  it  is 
easy  to  attribute  those  iridescent  hues  to  that  tegument 
of  defect,  but  they  are  due  to  the  form  which  the  energy 
within  supports.  This  escapes  ;  a  slop  of  soapy  water 
falls  ;  so  when  life  evades,  the  body  caves  in  and  moulders. 
The  hope  which  is  my  excuse  is  that  I  have  focused  atten- 
tion on  no  slimy  limitations  but  on  the  shape  bestowed 
by  that  expansive  energy. 

Life  is  impersonal  except  while  prisoned  in  some  alien 
material,  to  which  it  gives  as  perfectly  as  possible  an  im- 
10 


INTRODUCTION 

mortal  form.     At  least  it  is  safest  to  think  of  it  as  im- 
personal until  we  can  follow  it  out  of  one  form  into  another  : 
at  present  it  disappears  and  reappears,  like  but  not  neces- 
sarily the  same.     I  treat  of  poets,  not  of  persons.     Poetry- 
is  a  form  of  vitality  due  to  the  fact  that  language  can  be 
filled  with  significance  in  such  a  way  as  to  catch  the  light 
and  appear  transformed  in  texture  and  value.     The  poet's 
words  are  mere  words,  nevertheless  ;  we  all  use  and  misuse 
them.     His  success  is  limited  by  their  defects,  just  as  it 
has  always  been  seconded  by  the  energy  with  which  un- 
countable minds  have  charged  them.     So  the  poem  has 
a  distinct  character,  a  distinct  life,  and  a  distinct  fate, 
fuller  than  the  poet's  in  some  respects,  narrower  in  others. 
It  too   is   a  bubble  into  which  life  passes  through  the 
artist  as  through  a  pipe  often  cracked,  choked  or  faulty  ; 
liesides  the  materials  he  works  with,  the  soap  is  not  all 
good,  there  may  be  too  much  or  too  little  water,  and  at 
last  when  the  perfect  globe  sails  away  nobody  happens  to 
be  looking.     The  game  is  one  of  many  hazards.     Theorists 
insist  that  only  those  bubbles  that  sport  a  certain  blue  or 
green  or  purple  are  true  art.     But  no  dye,  no  pigment 
helps  ;  and  a  more  generously  endowed  faculty  discovers 
that  a  change  in  the  angle  of  regard  can  awaken  any  of  the 
seven  hues  on  all  that  float  the  air ;   for  not  subject  and 
sentiment  but  form  and  texture  import  ;    emotions  and 
themes  are  only  tabooed  by  prejudice.     The  rainbow  ad- 
miration even  hovers  over  the  bowl  of  suds,  and  any  bubble 
round  enough  might  be  induced  to  travel  alone  if  chivied 
about  with  a  conviction  equal  to  that  of  the  moment's 
fashion.     Histoiy  is  draughty,  capriciously  so,  and  to- 
morrow will  not  correct  all  the  mistakes  of  to-day.     Chance 
often  defeats  fine  work  while  it  treasures  trash.     These 
poets  have  been  chosen  at  random  out  of  the  hundreds 
that  are  launched  by  the  Press.     I  cannot  pretend  to  any 
assurance   that  I  have  chosen  the  largest  or  the  most 
prosperous  voyagers.     Twenty  years  ago  the  public  gave 

11 


INTRODUCTION 

comparatively  little  attention  to  youngsters  and  their 
poetry.  Perliaps  the  public  attitude  has  changed  more 
than  young  men  and  their  work.  First  the  turn  of  the 
century  made  the  future  seem  more  interesting  because 
it  had  got  a  new  name  ;  lately  these  l)oys  became  heroes, 
defenders,  creditors,  and  people  ■were  anxious  to  pay  them 
with  sympathy  and  imderstanding.  This  more  human 
attitude  no  doubt  exhilarates  the  poets.  Manly  youth 
during  these  last  four  years,  like  a  Niagara,  has  been 
tlumdering  down  into  an  abj^s  and  the  few-  bubbles  whose 
beauty  floats  upward  are  pathetically  disproportionate 
to  its  volume  and  sound.  To  realise  the  cost  of  the  forms 
of  social  life  yet  experimented  in  by  man  is  to  turn  in 
horror  from  the  past  towards  the  future.  But  only  by 
gazing  steadily  back  can  we  discern  what  life  has  produced 
and  therefore  may  again  shape  to  warrant  this  outlay. 
Art  and  poetry,  to  such  a  steady  gaze,  make  up  perhaps 
half  of  that  acceptable  excuse  for  man's  existence.  Nay, 
more  than  half ;  for  heroism,  personal  charm,  beauty, 
holiness,  wisdom  and  even  knowledge  live  again  reflected 
and  absorbed  into  works  of  art,  and  only  so  find  adequate 
remembrance. 

POSTSCRIPT 

The  war  is  over,  and  I  add  to  these  studies  of  Soldier 
Poets  a  lecture  on  The  Best  Poetry  read  before  the  Royal 
Society  of  Literature  on  27th  IMarch  1912,  in  hopes  of 
balancing  and  completing  their  significance.  Young 
poets  have  frequently  produced  perfect  things,  but  these 
have  rarely  been  of  any  length.  Much  practice  and 
familiarity  with  the  possibilities  of  words  and  thoughts  are 
required  in  complex  creations.  In  discovering  The  Best 
Poetry  the  qualities  of  great  works  must  be  scanned  in 
due  relation  to  the  excellences  of  lyrics,  and  thus,  perhaps, 
this  examination  of  work  hy  necessity  immature  may  be 
throvTi  into  perspective  and  refresh  without  confusing. 

12 


JULIAN   GRENFELL 

The  war  has  confounded  matter-of-fact  calculation  and 
made  most  people  aware  of  unprized  volcanic  resources 
in  human  nature.  However,  some  men,  many  young  men, 
have  always  felt  moved,  supported  or  opposed  by  agencies 
of  which  they  could  give  no  consistent  account  to  the 
seasoned  worldling.  Rhythms  and  cadences  which  express 
or  seem  to  lead  on  to  the  expression  of  life's  hidden  value 
take  possession  of  young  minds,  control  and  contort  their 
speech  into  jangling  rhyme  which,  since  the  war,  has  ac- 
quired increasing  popularity,  till  critics  remember  how 
during  the  wars  of  Napoleon  verse  sold  better  than  prose, 
and  wonder  whether  this  may  not  happen  again.  The 
customs  and  cares  of  civil  life  dishearten  and  depress, 
and  a  run  on  poetry  would  be  proof  of  reawakened  sensi- 
bility. Let  us  hope  that  England,  where  life  has  seemed 
both  stablest  and  stalest,  is  to  be  refreshed  l^y  a  wave  of 
finer  enthusiasm.  The  young  will  feel  it  first,  for  they 
are  never  stale  or  established.  Of  all  the  young  men 
whom  England  has  sent  out  to  fight,  he  who  has  produced 
the  best  poem  seems  to  have  least  hesitated,  answering 
the  call  to  fight  with  ecstatic  joy. 

Captain  the  Hon.  JuHan  H.  F.  Grenfell,  D.S.O.,  was 
bom  on  30th  March  1888,  obtained  a  commission  in  the  1st 
Royal  Dragoons  in  September,  1909,  and  died  of  wounds 
on  26th  May  191 5,  having  written  the  following  poem  about 
a  month  earlier  : — 


INTO  BATTLE 

The  naked  earth  is  warm  with  Spring, 
And  with  green  grass  and  bursting  trees 
Leans  to  the  sun's  gaze  glorying. 
And  quivers  in  the  sumiy  breeze  ; 

13 


SOME  SOU)IER  POETS 

And  life  is  Coloui"  and  Warmth  and  Light, 
And  a  striving  evermore  for  these ; 
And  he  is  dead  who  will  not  light, 
And  who  dies  fighting  has  increase. 

The  fighting  man  shall  from  the  sun 
Take  warmth,  and  life  from  glowing  earth  ; 
Speed  with  the  light-foot  winds  to  run 
And  with  the  trees  to  newer  birth  ; 
And  find,  when  fighting  shall  be  done, 
Great  rest,  and  fulness  after  dearth. 

All  the  bright  company  of  Heaven 
Hold  him  in  their  bright  comradeship, 
The  Dog  star,  and  the  Sisters  Seven, 
Orion's  belt  and  sworded  hip  : 

The  woodland  trees  that  stand  together, 
They  stand  to  him  each  one  a  friend  ; 
They  gently  speak  in  the  windy  weather  ; 
They  guide  to  valley  and  ridges  end. 

The  kestrel  hovering  by  day. 
And  the  little  owls  that  call  by  night, 
Bid  him  be  swift  and  keen  as  they. 
As  keen  of  ear,  as  smf  t  of  sight. 

The  blackbird  sings  to  him  :    "  Brother,  brother, 
If  this  be  the  last  song  you  shall  sing, 
Sing  well,  for  you  may  not  sing  another  ; 
Brother,  sing." 

In  dreary  doubtful  waiting  hours, 
Before  the  brazen  frenzy  starts, 
The  horses  show  him  nobler  powers  ;  — 
O  patient  eyes,  courageous  hearts  ! 

And  when  the  burning  moment  breaks, 
And  all  things  else  are  out  of  mind. 
And  only  joy  of  battle  takes 
Him  by  the  throat  and  makes  liim  blind, 

14 


JULIAN  GRENFEI.L 

Through  joy  and  blindness  he  shall  know, 
Not  caring  much  to  know,  that  still 
Nor  lead  nor  steel  shall  reach  him,  so 
That  it  be  not  the  Destined  Will. 

The  thundering  line  of  battle  stands. 
And  in  the  air  Death  moans  and  sings  ; 
But  Day  shall  clasp  him  with  strong  hands, 
And  Night  shall  fold  him  in  soft  wings. 

Many  readers  are  exhilarated  by  this  who  cannot  be  at 
the  pains  to  ravel  out  its  seciet ;  and  I  propose  to  help 
them,  that  the  impression  may  last  longer  and  satisfy 
more  completely.  Young  Grenfell  exults  at  fulfilling  an 
inborn  promise.  At  last  he  feels  free  to  be  what  instinct 
and  capacitj'  make  him  ;  general  consent  and  his  own 
conscience  permit  him  to  kill  and  to  die.  The  ecstasy  is 
like  that  of  married  love  :  a  fundamental  instmct  can  be 
gratified  untaxed  by  inward  loss  or  damage  and  with  the 
approval  of  mankind.  Harmony  between  impulse  and 
circiunstance  creates  this  joy  ;  but  not  only  is  it  more 
complex  than  that  of  the  young  male  stag  who  attacks 
the  leader  of  the  herd,  there  is  in  it  an  element  of  quite  a 
different  order,  a  sense  that  wrong  within  can  be  defeated 
by  braving  evil  abroad.  The  strain  between  worldly 
custom  and  that  passion  for  good  which  begets  spiritual 
insight,  finds  relief  in  fighting,  looks  for  peace  in  death. 
Only  the  noblest  spirits  when  young  so  intolerably  feel 
this  strain  that  they  welcome  such  an  end  as  delicious 
satisfaction.  Acquiescence  in  evil  seems  to  them  too 
high  a  price  to  pay  for  life.  As  though  it  were  a  devil,  they 
would  cast  out  all  complicity  with  it  from  themselves  as 
from  others.  This  is  the  focus  of  their  activity  and  mitil 
it  is  found  they  have  no  peace.  Shelley  is  recognised  as 
a  type  of  the  young  poet,  and  this  eagerness  to  attack 
evil  in  the  world  and  this  readiness  to  die  characterise 
him,  though  his  weapon  was  the  pen  and  he  faced  death 

15 


SOME  SOT.DTKR  POETS 

in  crazy  boats  and  fever-stricken  liovels  and  not  in 
battle. 

The  intimate  delicacy  and  justness  of  this  mai*vellous 
lyric  will  ai)pcar  more  brilliantly  yet  if  we  contrast  the 
asj)ects  which  arouse  its  eloquence  with  those  more  com- 
monly selected  when  the  tlieme  is  w^ar. 

Throughout  the  poem  no  hint  is  given  of  the  nature 
of  the  enemy  ;  he  does  not  proclaim,  as  so  many  have 
done,  that  he  fights  for  right  or  against  tyranny.  He 
does  not  himself  look  I'orward  to  tasting  the  fruits  of 
victory ;  he  accepts  death  as  the  natural  necessary 
reward  of  taking  up  arms.  Even  in  peace  he  had  chosen 
to  serve  by  being  ready  to  fight.  Yet  he  does  not  cry  up 
devotion  to  England.  You  will  say  his  was  obvious. 
That  is  just  it,true  poetry  does  not  say  what  is  unnecessary. 

That  a  young  man  of  this  gentleness  should  be  glad 
both  to  kill  and  be  killed  shows  that  the  martyr  and  the 
soldier  are  not  opposite  tj-pes  but  stand  before  the  deeply 
moved  conscience  as  equal  heroes.  Both  are  finest  when 
each  most  resembles  the  other  :  the  martyr,  courageous, 
unflinching,  capable  of  detachment  and  courtesy  to  the 
last :  the  soldier,  conscientious,  humane  and  unaggressive  : 
St  Stephen  and  St  George.  The  quality  of  emotion  in 
these  stanzas  will  serve  as  a  touchstone  to  imperialist 
and  pacifist  theories.  True  peace  is  not  signed  by  govern- 
ments, but  is  something  never  yet  achieved  on  earth. 
That  so-called  peace  which  preceded  the  war  must  have 
created  the  exultant  relief  to  have  done  with  it  w^hich 
this  young  man  felt.  And  we  know  he  was  right,  we 
know  its  foul  shame,  we  know  how^  unworthy  it  was  of 
the  name  we  so  fondly  gave  it.     Peace  indeed  ! 

The  sanity  of  a  true  inspiration  is  miraculous  and  avoids 
errors  which  we  all  breathe  and  utter,  and  yet  does  not 
fall  into  the  opposition  of  that  half  illumination  which, 
like  a  bee  on  a  window-pane,  angrily  buzzes  itself  to  death 
because  it  sees  but  cannot  enter  the  light.     Neither  is 

16 


JULIAN  GRENFELL 

it  passive,  disclaiming  part  and  parcel  in  humanity's 
Lragedy,  as  though  thei'e  were  any  other  means  of  support 
than  man's  widespread  good  will.  Men  and  nations,  we 
all  depend  for  what  we  are  permitted  to  be  on  friendliness 
and  co-operation. 

The  senses  both  of  mind  and  body  are  tender,  all  callous- 
ness impairs  them.  The  slaves  of  machinery,  with  their 
real-politik  and  subsei-viency  to  fact,  are  m  all  countries 
striving  to  stifle  liberty,  poetry,  joy.  But  kindness  is 
stronger  than  discipline  and  courtesy  more  victorious 
than  munitions. 

Since  I  wrote  this  a  pamphlet  has  been  published  with 
extracts  from  Julian  Grenf ell's  letters  ;  these  strengthen 
and  endorse  the  impression  received  from  his  poem.  He 
was  a  born  fighter  :  there  is  a  wonderful  description  of  a 
boxing  match  he  had  with  a  champion  at  Johannesburg, 
too  long  to  quote  here  but  very  worth  reading.  After  he 
had  been  knocked  down  three  times  he  remarks  that  his 
"  head  was  clearing."     Yet  he  can  also  write  : 

"  I  hate  material  books,  centred  on  whether  people  are 
successful.  I  like  books  about  artists  and  philosophers 
and  dreamers,  anybody  who  is  just  a  little  bit  off  his  dot." 

Success  in  this  present  world  is  a  little  incompatible 
with  real  success  ;  one  is  a  trifle  beside  the  mark  of  the 
other  even  when  they  seem  to  coincide. 

"  I  longed  to  be  able  to  say  that  I  liked  it,  after  all  that 
one  has  heard  of  being  under  fire  for  the  first  time.  But 
it  is  beastly.  I  pretended  to  myself  for  a  bit  that  I  liked 
it,  but  it  was  no  good  ;  it  only  made  me  careless  and  un- 
watchful  and  self-absorbed  ;  but  when  one  acknowledged 
to  oneself  that  it  was  beastly,  one  became  all  right  again 
and  cool." 

So  his  head  began  to  clear  again  just  in  time. 

^  Julian  Orenfell :  A  Memoir.   By  Viola  Meynell.   Burns  &Oate8.   Is, 
B  17 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

"  Here  Ave  arc  in  the  burning  centre  of  it  all,  and  I  would 
not  be  anywhere  else  for  a  million  pounds  and  the  Queen 
of  Sheba." 

Consciously  or  imconsciously  he  repeats  the  sentiment 
that  Shakespeare  put  into  the  mouth  of  Henry  V.  at  Agin- 
court  and  Sir  Henry  Newbolt  into  Nelson's  in  his  Admirals 
All.  That  sentiment  characterises  the  bom  leader : 
when  facing  danger  he  feels  that  he  is  where  he  can  best 
prove  what  he  is.  He  felt  "  utterly  ashamed  "  of  himself 
when  he  had  met  a  Gei-man  officer  prisoner  with  a  scowl, 
the  other  looked  so  "  proud,  so  resolute,  smart  and  con- 
fident in  his  hour  of  bitterness."  This  instant  challenge 
and  rebuke  of  himself  was  akin  to  his  mastery  and  initia- 
tive. He  begged  to  be  allowed  to  go  out  into  "  No  Man's 
Land  "  stalking  Germans,  and  was  refused.    At  last : 

.  "  They  told  me  to  take  a  section  with  me,  and  I  said  I 
would  rather  cut  my  throat  and  have  done  with  it.  So 
they  let  me  go  alone." 

His  experiences  are  as  good  reading  as  the  fight  at 
Johannesburg,  but  too  long  to  quote. 

"  I  got  back  at  a  sort  of  galloping  crawl  and  sent  a 
message  to  the  10th  that  the  Germans  were  moving  up 
their  way  in  some  numbers.  .  .  .  They  made  quite  a 
ridiculous  fuss  about  me  stalking,  and  getting  the  message 
through.  ...  It  was  up  to  someone  to  do  it  instead  of 
leaving  it  all  to  the  Geniians  and  losing  two  officers  a  day 
through  snipers.  All  our  men  have  started  it  now.  It  is 
a  popular  amusement." 

But  first  is  first  to-day  just  as  when  David  met  Goliath. 
A  piece  of  bursting  shell  has  deprived  us  of  a  great  leader, 
with  the  characteristics  of  the  fmcst  kings  of  men.  And 
though  wealthy  enough  to  travel  with  dogs  and  horses 
wherever  he  went,  he  could  not  bear  to  think  that  a  friend 
18 


JULIAN  GRENFELL 

had  deserted  the  Sociahst  cause  out  of  respect  for  "  the 
loaves  and  the  fishes."     This  friend  writes  : 

"  I  don't  suppose  many  people  knew  what  an  ardent 
love  he  had  for  honesty  of  purpose  and  intellectual  honesty, 
and  what  sacrifices  he  made  for  them — sacrifices  of  peace- 
of-mind  abhorrent  to  most  Englishmen  .  .  .  caused  him- 
self no  end  of  worry  and  unhappiness." 

Yes,  facing  discomfort  clears  the  will,  as  facing  physical 
danger  clears  the  head,  and  wrong  within  can  be  defeated 
by  braving  evil  abroad.  And  now  while  intellectual 
honesty  is  at  a  premium  I  will  confess  that  the  last  two  lines 
of  his  Into  Battle  always  disappoint  me.  They  ring  hollow 
and  empty  ;  it  is  as  though  he  had  been  disturbed  and 
scribbled  in  haste  something  that  looks  like  an  end  but 
is  not,  and  never  given  his  mind  to  the  poem  again. 

The  other  poems  published  since  are  slighter  in  mood 
and  more  boyish  in  execution.  Though  they  are  not  bad, 
they  are  not  good  enough  to  enhance  the  effect  of  Into 
Battle. 

Physically,  mentally  and  morally  splendid,  he  miglit 
seem  to  have  done  little  in  this  world  but  be  and  be  de- 
stroyed. Yet  to  have  been,  and  to  be  known  to  have  been 
such  as  he  was,  may  well  in  time  seem  one  of  the  grandest 
facts  of  these  times.  Such  admiration  as  we  owe  to  him 
is  an  experience  as  rare  as  it  is  beneficent,  and  will  out- 
last a  vast  number  of  topics  and  crazes.  Two  phases  of 
his  worth  he  revealed  even  to  those  who  never  met  him  : 
the  one  in  his  poem,  the  other  in  his  letters  ;  and  they 
tally  as  the  like  aspects  have  rarely  tallied  in  other  men. 
This  proves  the  density  of  the  integrity  that  was  destroyed 
by  a  fragment  of  iron.  He  lay  wounded  a  few  weeks 
before  he  ceased  to  suffer. 

The  worst  horror  of  modern  war  is  not  the  vastness  of 
its  destmctions  but  the  number  of  spirits  whom  it  en- 
slaves to  machmery  ;    and  in  this  it  closely  resembles 

19 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

modern  peace.  The  plough  lacerates  the  turf,  many  lowly 
and  lovely  lives  are  sacrificed  that  wheat  may  be  sown 
and  a  taller,  straighter  growth  raised  to  sustain  a  higher 
pulse  of  life.  But  how  many  of  our  modem  machines 
create  what  is  useless  or  harmful,  at  the  expense  of  the 
best  life  both  of  tliose  whose  profit  is  intended  and  of  those 
whom  they  exploit  !  Is  there  so  much  choice  between 
the  horrors  of  war  and  those  of  peace  when  they  are  truly 
estimated  that  the  pacifist  should  prefer  them  or  the 
imperialist  wish  to  re-establish  them  ?  That  men  shoidd 
be  forced  by  the  self-seeking  of  others  to  linger  in  want 
or  to  die  in  cruel  torture  is  equally  abhorrent.  The  hope 
of  all  generous  spirits  is  to  have  done  by  means  of  the  war 
with  the  peace  that  they  have  known  and  to  usher  in  a 
better  order.  And  Grenfell  cheers  this  hope  as  few  can, 
foreshowing  a  better  proportioned  life.  The  limpidity 
and  strength  of  his  emotion,  though  it  creates  beauty  and 
reveals  wisdom,  was  seconded  by  no  matured  art  ;  yet 
those  who  have  this  at  command  are  so  liable  to  fail  just 
where  he  succeeds,  in  sureness  of  aim. 


20 


RUPERT  BROOKE 

Rupert  Brooke  was  beginning  to  be  kno^\^l  both  as  a 
poet  and  for  rare  personal  beauty  when  his  death  at  the 
age  of  twenty-eight,  on  his  way  out  to  the  Dardanelles, 
set  him  beside  Sir  Philip  Sidney  as  scholar,  soldier,  poet 
and  patriot. 

There  was  a  factitious  element  in  this  burst  of  acclama- 
tion, something  we  can  hope  the  man  himself  would  have 
responded  less  and  less  to.  Though  the  beauty  of  his 
person  and  the  daintiness  of  his  verse  and  the  gentleness 
of  his  manners  made  worldlings  eager  to  spoil  him,  he  was 
not  averse  to  hard  work,  and  maintained  a  certain  reserve 
which  augured  a  better  future  for  him  than  that  of  a  darling 
of  fashion.  He  and  his  yovmg  Cambridge  friends  of  both 
sexes  seem  to  have  cherished  an  ideal  of  free  comradeship, 
and  to  have  realised  it  in  an  uncommon  degree  without 
paying  toll  in  scandals  to  the  censorious  world.  In  like 
manner  his  verse,  though  playful  and  ornamental,  so  toys 
with  philosophical  inquiries  as  to  hint  at  latent  resources 
of  graver  power.  Such  problems  as  whether  any  com- 
mimions  are  possible,  whether  I  can  know  you  or  you  me, 
and  whether  existence  is  absolutely  conditioned  by  time 
and  space,  are  whimsically  put  and  illustrated  in  such 
instances  as  a  fish,  or  a  single  moment  of  one  particular 
tea  in  a  dining-room. 

"  Oh  !  never  fly  conceals  a  hook, 
Fish  say,  in  the  Eternal  Brook, 
But  more  than  mundane  weeds  are  there. 
And  mud,  celestially  fair  ; 
Fat  caterpillars  drift  around. 
And  Paradisal  grubs  are  found  ; 
Unfading  moths,  immortal  flies, 
And  the  worm  that  never  dies. 
And  in  that  heaven  of  all  their  wish. 
There  shall  be  no  more  land,  say  fish." 

21 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

Only  an  arch  levity  saves  this  from  being  trite.  I  should 
have  to  quote  too  much  before  I  could  illustrate  his  amuse- 
ment Avith  the  possible  delusions  of  men's  thoughts.  But 
occasionally  a  serious  shudder  is  glim})sed  l)ehind  the 
smiling  mask. 

"  And  suddenly  there's  no  meaning  in  our  kiss 
And  your  lit  upward  face  grows,  where  we  lie, 
Lonelier  and  drcadfuller  than  sunlight  is, 
And  duml)  and  mad  and  eyeless  like  the  sky." 

His  sovran  preoccupation,  that  which  inspired  his  best 
poems,  was  the  least  suitable  for  one  whom  some  have 
imagined  cut  out  for  the  part  of  a  modern  Antinous,  to 
whom  the  elite  of  London,  both  male  and  female,  should 
corporately  play  the  part  of  a  platonic  Hadrian.  His 
thoughts  flocked  about  death.  At  first  he  dallies  with 
them. 

"  Oh  !  Death  w-ill  find  me,  long  before  I  tire 
Of  watching  you  ;   and  swing  me  suddenly 
Into  the  shade  and  loneliness  and  mire 
Of  the  last  land  !     There,  w^aiting  patiently. 
One  day,  I  think  I'll  find  a  cool  wind  blowing, 
See  a  slow  light  across  the  Stygian  tide, 
And  hear  the  dead  about  me  stir,  unknowing. 
And  tremble.     And  I  shall  know  that  you  have  died 
And  watch  you,  a  broad-browed  and  smiling  dream, 
Pass  light  as  ever,  through  the  lightless  host, 
Quietly  ponder,  start,  and  sway,  and  gleam — 
Most  individual  and  bewildering  ghost  !-^- 
And  turn  and  toss  your  brown  delightful  head 
Amusedly,  among  the  ancient  Dead." 

But  his  contemplation  of  possible  significance  in  life's 
end  passes  gradually  into  scrcner  moods. 

CLOUDS 

Down  the  blue  night  the  unending  columns  press 
In  noiseless  tumult,  break  and  wave  and  flow. 
Now  tread  the  far  South,  or  lift  rounds  of  snow 
Up  to  the  white  moon's  hidden  loveliness. 

22 


RUPERT  BROOKE 

Some  pause  in  their  grave  wandering  comradeless, 
And  turn  with  profound  gesture  vague  and  slow, 
As  who  would  pray  good  for  the  world,  but  know 
Their  benediction  empty  as  they  bless. 
They  say  that  the  Dead  die  not,  but  remain 
Near  to  the  rich  heirs  of  their  grief  and  mirth. 
I  think  they  ride  the  calm  mid-heaven,  as  these, 
In  wise  majestic  melancholy  train. 
And  watch  the  moon  and  the  still-raging  seas, 
And  men,  coming  and  going  on  the  earth." 

At  last  in  his  finest  poem  these  reveries  rise  to  an  ex- 
pression worthy  of  the  classics  of  our  language. 

i 

THE  DEAD  (1914) 

These  hearts  were  woven  of  human  joys  and  cares, 

Washed  marvellously  with  sorrow,  swift  to  mirth, 

The  years  had  given  them  kindness.     Da^\Ti  was  theirs, 

And  sunset  and  the  colours  of  the  earth. 

These  had  seen  movement,  and  heard  music  ;  known 

Slumber  and  waking ;    loved  ;   gone  proudly  friended  ; 

Felt  the  quick  stir  of  wonder  ;  sat  alone  ; 

Touched  flowers  and  furs,  and  cheeks.     All  this  is  ended. 

There  are  waters  blown  by  changing  winds  to  laughter 

And  lit  by  the  rich  skies  all  day.     And  after, 

Frost,  with  a  gesture,  stays  the  waves  that  dance 

In  wandering  loveliness.     He  leaves  a  white 

Unbroken  glory,  a  gathered  radiance, 

A  width,  a  shining  peace,  under  the  night. ^ 

The  remoteness  and  impersonality  of  this  sadness,  with 
the  wide  horizon  and  imifying  candour,  compel  our  deepest 
welcome.  The  effort  to  startle,  allure,  or  amuse  has 
vanished.  No  doubt  the  devotion  to  England,  dwelt  on 
in  the  other  sonnets  of  the  1914  sequence,  won  more  of 
the  praise  ;  but  some  who  acutely  felt  his  charm  were 
conscious  of  a  falsetto  emphasis  in  those  efforts  to  say  the 

^  Quotations  by  permission  of  Brooke's  literary  representative, 
E.   Marsh,  Esq. 

23 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

right  thing  at  the  right  moment,  although  his  death  had 
doubled  their  appeal. 

Poems  demand  to  he  read  aloud  by  someone  who  has 
instinet  ive  sympathy  for  the  paee,  tone  and  address  proper 
to  eaeh.  For  many  the  interest  nmst  at  first,  and  perhaps 
long,  lie  in  the  mental  attitude  revealed.  Nor  is  this 
attitude  a  small  or  insignificant  part  of  the  impression 
which  ought  to  be  made  by  poetry — the  most  perfect  speech 
of  man,  as  it  has  been  called — that  is,  the  utterance  to 
which  the  greatest  number  of  his  faculties  coml)ined  in 
harmonious  balance  contribute.  The  way  the  speaker 
has  borne  himself,  and  the  way  he  now  confronts  the  world, 
must  influence  this  hannony  profoundly.  His  words 
betray  his  past  and  present  to  those  whose  attention  is 
sufficiently  continuous  and  searching,  by  indices  that  lie 
around  and  beyond  the  mere  meaning  of  the  sentences 
used — indices  gleaned  from  their  interplay  and  the  degree 
in  which  eaeh  alters  and  defines  the  whole  sense,  as  much 
as  from  the  melody  of  the  words  or  the  rhythm  of  their 
just  enunciation.  This  aroma,  which  arises  from  the 
organism  of  the  meaning,  translators  can  often  convey 
to  other  nations  ;  for  the  beauties  of  diction  and  rhytlmi, 
many  among  those  who  speak  the  same  tongue  should 
accept  the  verdict  of  trained  appreciators.  Now  melody 
and  rhythm  often  engross  trained  apprehension,  and  the 
]  less  learned  may  therefore  be  more  ready  to  note  the  grave 
drift  of  wonder  which  flows  beneath  the  playful,  indulged 
and  indulgent  surface  of  Brooke's  art,  than  were  his 
aesthetic  admirers.  Those  eyes  which  gaze  out  from  be- 
hind his  poems  have  been  fascinated  by  the  contrast 
between  the  momentousness  of  life  to  us,  and  our  strangely 
casual  relation  to  its  vast  movement,  which  is  not  at  all 
suited  to  nourish  our  hopes  of  divining  the  whole  truth. 
Those  eyes  seem  to  dance  ;  for  has  not  methodic  inquiry 
begun  to  reconsider  what  it  had  denounced  as  entirely 
fabulous  ?  Death's  door,  which  Spencer,  Renan  and 
24 


RUPERT  BROOKE 

Nietzsche  regarded  as  finally  closed,  is  well-nigh  ajar  once 
more.  Brooke's  amused  alertness  is  like  that  of  a  child 
who  watches  a  door  emphatically  closed  upon  a  cupboard 
declared  to  be  empty  by  grown-up  assurance  ;  it  creaks, 
and  mysteriously  seems  to  stir  ;  other  little  boys  and  girls, 
his  playmates,  pay  scant  attention  to  its  unaccountable 
behaviour.  He  himself  thinks  he  has  seen  that  the  cup- 
board was  vacant,  and  yet,  in  spite  of  himself,  is  fascinated 
by  the  possibility  of  a  ghostly  opener.  Smiling  over  his 
own  fancies,  Brooke  seems  to  have  sat  half  abstracted  at 
a  pleasure  party  till  the  outbreak  of  war.  He  immedi- 
ately volunteered,  though  delicate  and  but  recently 
returned  from  a  voyage  across  America  and  through  the 
Pacific  Islands  in  search  of  health — health  which  finally 
failed  him  before  he  had  struck  a  blow  or  fired  a  shot, 
though  he  had  been  to  Antwerp  with  the  naval  expedition. 
To-day  he  stands  with  Julian  Grenfell,  as  I  see  them 
through  their  work,  in  attitudes  that  suggest  statues  more 
worthy  of  the  acropolis  of  the  supreme  city  than  any  of 
those  which  the  public  figures  of  these  times  have  yet 
assumed.  What  is  done  is  always  faulty,  but  what  is  | 
intended  may  sometimes  be  divinely  fair ;  and  early  ^ 
death  leaves  this  untampered  with.  Finely  wrought 
bronze,  these  youths  and  their  peers  from  other  lands  stand 
in  that  lofty  garden  above  the  ideal  town,  listening  to 
their  "  friends  "  the  trees.  At  their  feet  children  play  on 
the  grass,  and  young  girls  crumble  bread  to  lure  doves  down 
from  the  heroic  shoulders  ;  while  for  the  men  who  glance 
at  them  in  passing  the  inspiration  of  their  bearing  is  all 
that  remains  of  the  Great  War.  The  ardent  Grenfell 
leaps  forward  ;  Brooke  with  smiling  grace  escapes  from 
the  uncomfortable  admiration  of  a  bygone  age — both  bent 
on  grasping  by  the  hand  their  new  and  best  friend.  Death. 


25 


A   HALF  PLEIADE 

Let  St  Beiive's  avowal  justify  this  title  :  "  All  these 
Academies,  between  you  and  me,  are  pieces  of  childishness, 
at  any  rate  the  French  Academy  is.  Our  least  quarter 
of  an  hour  of  solitary  reveries  or  of  serious  talk,  yours  and 
mine,  in  our  youth,  was  better  employed  ;  but  as  one 
gets  old  one  falls  back  into  the  power  of  these  nothings ; 
only  it  is  well  to  know  what  nothings  they  are."  So  the 
significance  of  serious  thought  and  discussion  about  art 
is  apt  to  hold  an  inverse  ratio  to  the  number  and  age  of 
those  who  think  and  discuss  ;  for  the  future  is  always  in- 
visible. Robert  Nichols,  Siegfried  Sassoon  and  Robert 
Graves,  friends  by  their  own  avowal,  have  possibly  had 
this  importance  in  intimate  conclave.  Who  can  be  sure 
that  they  have  not  deserved  my  title  ?  They  make  no 
claim  to  be  reformers  or  a  movement,  but  such  announce- 
ments are  perhaps  a  fashionable  foible,  a  trait  which  will 
disparage  and  date  our  period  a  hundred  years  hence. 
"  The  political  virus  even  infected  literature  ;  writers  and 
artists  called  themselves  impressionists,  symbolists,  futur- 
ists, imagists  and  cubists  ;  they  published  programmes 
and  manifestoes,  the  charlatans  !  "  as  some  unborn  Taine 
may  phrase  it. 

Rupert  Brooke's  verse  had  a  conscious  elegance  that 
diverse  judges  attribute  either  to  his  treasuring  a  meagre 
vein  or  to  a  wary  nature's  perception  that  there  had  only 
yet  been  time  to  polish  one  of  its  many  facets.  In  Robert 
Nichols'  work  variety  and  abundance  are  more  evident 
than  artistry  and  selectness.  As  if  to  make  up  for  this  he 
has  prefaced  his  volume  ^  with  two  quotations  from  An 
Introduction  to  the  Scientific  Study  of  English  Poetry,  by 
Mark  Liddell.  These  passages,  though  neither  new  nor 
perfectly  expressed,  suggest  that  Nichols'  attention  has 
been  absorbed  by  the  rehearsal  of  passionate  experience 

^  Ardours  and  Endurances .     By  Robert  Nichols.     Chatto  &  Windus. 

27 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

or  its  reverberation  througli  imagined  scenes,  ratlier  tlian 
by  niceties  of  style  or  prosody.  All  that  he  means  by 
"  a  rln-thm  of  ideas  "  is  that  the  sense  of  the  words  should 
inspire  the  cadences  of  their  sound  ;  for,  of  course,  in  its 
major  structures  as  well  as  in  line  and  stanza,  rhj'thm  is  a 
sensuous  character  only  applicable  to  ideas  by  a  metaphor. 
Poetry  is,  he  thinks,  "a  marvel  of  the  brain"  funda- 
mentally the  same  in  all  men  ;  the  poet  only  excels  by 
more  perfect  organs  of  perception  and  expression — a  con- 
ception in  generous  contrast  to  that  of  the  young  man, 
who  is  so  keen  on  distinguishing  his  work  as  to  whittle  his 
gift  away  in  the  effort  to  remove  all  trace  of  kinship  with 
other  minds.  On  the  other  hand,  only  time  will  show 
whether  Nichols  will  say  a  great  deal  in  a  manner  not 
sufficiently  distinct  to  live,  or  will  fulfil  the  promise  every- 
where apparent  in  this  book. 

"  On  either  hand  the  slender  trees 
Bow  to  the  caressing  breeze. 
And  shake  their  shocks  of  silver  light 
Against  skies  marbled  greenish-white. 
Save  where,  within  a  rent  of  blue. 
The  tilted  slip  of  moon  glints  through. 
Glittering  upon  us  as  we  dance 
With  a  soft  extravagance 
Of  limbs  as  blonde  as  Autumn  boughs 
And  gold  locks  floating  from  moony  brows. 
While  anguished  Pan  the  pipes  doth  blow 
Fond  and  tremulous  and  low.  ..." 

A  good  omen  !  We  are  reminded  of  the  sweetest  music 
of  classical  English.  It  is  not  easy  to  imitate  ;  let  those 
who  think  it  is,  echo  so  fine  a  strain  so  freshl}-.  .  Nothing 
comes  of  nothing,  but  out  of  imitative  admiration  grow 
the  grand  wings  of  the  Muses.  However,  this  Faun's' 
Holiday  is  a  rambling,  shapeless  poem,  though  it  constantly 
threatens  to  be  better  than  it  anywhere  is.  With  the 
anxiety  of  one  who  expects  to  sui-pass  himself  Mr  Nichols 

28 


A  HALF  PLEIADE 

appends  "Oxford,  Early  Spring,  1914,"  to  the  poem, 
which  is  preceded  by  a  note  telling  us  that  one  part  is 
adapted  from  a  version  of  1912  and  another  only  com- 
posed as  late  as  July,  1914.  To  set  so  seriously  about 
helping  your  biographer  is  charmingly  youthful.  Another 
pre-war  poem  called  The  Tower  describes  Judas  leaving 
the  Last  Supper  : 

"...  one  arose  to  depart 
Having  weakness  and  hate  of  weakness  raging  within 

his  heart 
And  bowed  to  the  robed  assembly  whose  eyes  gleamed 

wet  in  the  light"  — 

and  at  the  bottom  of  the  tower  found  beside  the  door — 

"  Mary  of  Seven  Evils,  Mary  Magdalen. 
And  he  was  frighted  at  her.     She  sighed  :    '  I  dreamed 

him  dead. 
We  sell  the  body  for  silver  .  .  .' 

Then  Judas  cried  out  and  fled." 

Though  the  texture  of  the  poem  has  been  accepted  too 
easily,  these  are  touches  of  imaginative  power  which  may 
lead  to  greater  things.     Possibly  his  best  poem  is — 

THE  RECKONING 

The  whole  world  burns,  and  with  it  burns  my  flesh. 

Arise,  thou  spirit  spent  by  sterile  tears  ; 

Thine  eyes  were  ardent  once,  thy  looks  were  fresh. 

Thy  brow  shone  bright  amid  thy  shining  peers. 

Fame  calls  thee  not,  thou  who  hast  vainly  strayed 

So  far  from  her  ;  nor  Passion,  who  in  the  past 

Gave  thee  her  ghost  to  wed  and  to  be  paid  ; 

Nor  love,  Avhose  anguish  only  learned  to  last. 

Honour  it  is  that  calls  ;   canst  thou  forget 

Once  thou  wert  strong  ?     Listen,  the  solemn  call 

Sounds  but  this  once  again.     Put  by  regret 

For  summons  missed,  or  thou  hast  missed  them  all. 

Body  is  ready.  Fortune  pleased  ;    O  let 

Not  the  poor  Past  cost  the  proud  Future's  fall. 

29 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

Witli  tliat  he  turns  to  enlist.  It  is  a  little  difficult  to 
guess  what  "  Fortune  pleased  "  may  refer  to.  Possibly 
that,  in  sounding  him  this  new,  terrible  summons.  Fortune 
shows  herself  pleased  to  give  him  a  new  chance  of  re- 
trieving whatever  in  his  life  had  gone  awry.  The  rest  is 
touching  in  its  sincerity,  all  the  more  for  its  somewhat 
grandiloquent  address. 

Wistful,  hesitant,  eager,  boyish,  yet  already  regretful 
over  things  done  ill — all  the  ingenuous  flutter  of  an  am- 
bitious but  not  yet  fully  sinewed  nature — with  what  image 
shall  we  associate  the  attitude  of  Robert  Nichols  in  this 
book  ?  Sculpture  is  too  definite.  But  a  fresco  in  the 
Prytaneum.  Not  a  large  panel  nor  in  a  central  place.  I 
see  a  boy  battling  in  a  strong  wind  with  a  shirt  from  which 
he  cannot  free  his  wrists.  Splash  !  splash  !  his  com- 
panions plunge  into  the  sea,  he  totters  with  impatience, 
half  laughs  at  his  own  misfortune,  blushes  at  seeming  to 
lag  behind,  3'et  thrills  at  the  possibility  of  retrieving  all 
and  being  first  at  the  goal.  But  many  of  these  poems  are 
dreamy  !  and  was  not  our  lad  in  a  muse  when  he  forgot 
to  unbutton  those  wrist-bands,  before  pulling  his  shirt 
over  his  head  ?  Look,  the  sky  is  grey,  the  water  rough, 
the  wind  deafening  ;  only  those  who  swim  for  honour 
will  not  defer  the  race. 

With  Siegfried  Sassoon  we  have  "  glad  confident 
morning  "  ;  he  does  easily  and  well  what  he  desires  to  do. 
His  rhythms  never  hark  back  to  Milton's  youth  as  Robert 
Nichols'  did  ;  they  stop  short  at  John  INIasefield  and 
Thomas  Hardy.  The  longest  poem  ^  is  a  monologue. 
The  speaker,  an  old  huntsman,  has  become  inn-keeper, 
only  to  lose  his  savings  instead  of  increasing  them  ;  he 
lazily  maunders  about  life  and  religion,  the  point  being 
the  piquancy  of  vulgar  notions  of  hell  and  heaven,  when 
travestied  in  images  drawn  from  his  narrow  round  of 
experience  with  the  pack  and  behind  the  bar.     It  might 

^  The  Old  Hunttman  and  Other  Poems.     Heinemann.     5s. 
30 


A  HALF  PLEIADE 

be  claimed  by  those  anxious  to  show  that  this  young 
poet's  roots  strike  deeper  than  I  have  suggested  that  this 
poem  resembles  Bro^vning's  Caliban  on  Setebos.  The 
book  at  first  seems  merely  smart,  buoyed  on  good  health 
and  good  fortune,  "  like  little  wanton  boys  who  swim  on 
bladders." 

STAND  TO  :  GOOD  FRIDAY  MORNING 

I'd  been  on  duty  from  two  till  four. 

I  went  and  stared  at  the  dug-out  door. 

Down  in  the  frowst  I  heard  them  snore. 

"  Stand  to  !  "     Somebody  grunted  and  swore. 

Dawn  was  misty  ;    the  skies  were  still ; 

Larks  were  singing,  discordant  and  shrill ; 

They  seemed  happy  ;  but  I  felt  iU. 

Deep  in  water  I  splashed  my  way 

Up  the  trench  to  our  bogged  front  line. 

Ram  had  fallen  the  whole  damned  night, 

O  Jesus,  send  me  a  wound  to-day, 

And  I'll  believe  in  Your  bread  and  wine, 

And  get  my  bloody  old  sins  washed  white. 

Graves'  tone  is  more  felicitous  in  this  vein,  his  cynicism 
is  less  consciously  aggressive. 

STRONG  BEER 

Tell  us,  now,  how  and  when 
We  may  find  the  bravest  men  ?  .  .  . 
Oh,  never  choose  as  Gideon  chose 
By  the  cold  well,  but  rather  those 
Who  look  on  beer  when  it  is  brown, 
Smack  their  lips  and  gulp  it  down. 
Leave  the  lads  who  tamely  drink 
With  Gideon  by  the  water  brink, 
But  search  the  benches  of  the  Plough, 
The  Tun,  The  Sun,  The  Spotted  Cow, 
For  jolly  rascals,  lads  who  pray, 
Pe\^i:er  in  hand,  at  close  of  day, 
"  Teach  me  to  live  that  I  may  fear 
The  grave  as  little  as  my  beer." 

31 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

Nichols  is  hardly  ever  so  successful  as  these  two  pieces 
are,  yet  even  his  war  poems  (records  of  casual  scenes  and 
moods),  which  cannot  be  said  to  push  l)eyond  appearances, 
are  warmer  and  not  so  arid  as  Bassoon's,  not  so  trivial  as 
Graves'. 

"  '  'Ello  !   wot's  up  ?  '     '  Let's  'ave  a  look  ! ' 
'  Come  on.  Ginger,  drop  that  book  !  ' 
'  Wot  an  'ell  of  bloody  noise  !  ' 
'  It's  the  Yorks  and  Lanes,  me  boys  ! ' 

So  we  crowd  :    hear,  watch  them  come  .  .  . 

One  man  drubbing  on  a  drum, 

A  crazy,  high  mouth-organ  blowing. 

Tin  cans  rattling,  cat-calls,  crowing  .  .  . 

'  'Ip  'urrah  !  '     '  Give  Fritz  the  chuck.' 

'  Good  ol'  bloody  Yorks  !  '     '  (Jood  luck  ! ' 

'  Cheer ! ' 

I  cannot  cheer  or  speak 
Lest  my  voice,  my  heart  must  break." 

His  comrades'  intentions  are  thinner  than  this,  indeed 
so  fully  rewarded  with  a  grin  that  the  title  "poet" 
appears  misplaced.  Slangy  cynicism  characterises  many 
of  Sassoon's  poems,  but  reading  on,  something  deeper  is 
discovered. 

"  When  I  ni  among  a  blaze  of  lights, 
W^ith  tawdry  music  and  cigars 
And  women  dawdling  through  delights. 
And  officers  at  cocktail  bars,  .  .  . 
Sometimes  I  think  of  garden  nights 
And  elm  trees  nodding  at  the  stars. 

I  dream  of  a  small  fire-lit  room 

With  yellow  candles  burning  straight, 

And  glowing  pictures  in  the  gloom, 

And  kindly  books  that  hold  me  late. 

Of  things  like  these  I  love  to  think 

When  I  can  never  be  alone  : 

Then  someone  says  :    '  Another  drink  ?  '  .  .  . 

And  turns  my  living  heart  to  stone." 

32 


A  HALF  PLEIADE 

Nothing  could  be  better  than  that  "When  I  can  never 
be  alone."  It  is  as  apt  as  it  is  simple,  worthy  of  any- 
master. 

So  he  yearns  from  the  crowd,  the  mud,  the  din  at  the 
Front ;  and  when  he  gets  home  on  leave  he  walks  up 
round  the  house  where  his  friend  used  to  live,  and  through 
the  wood  they  often  paced  together,  seeking  for  com- 
munion with  him,  though  he  is  dead. 

"  Ah,  but  there  was  no  need  to  call  his  name. 
He  was  beside  me  now,  as  swift  as  light. 
I  knew  him  crushed  to  earth  in  scentless  flowers, 
And  lifted  in  the  rapture  of  dark  pines. 
'  For  now,'  he  said,  '  my  spirit  has  more  eyes 
Than  heaven  has  stars  ;  and  they  are  lit  by  love. 
My  body  is  the  magic  of  the  world. 
And  dawn  and  sunset  flame  with  my  spilt  blood. 
My  breath  is  the  great  wind  and  I  am  filled 
With  molten  power  and  surge  of  the  bright  waves 
That  chant  my  doom  along  the  ocean's  edge.  .  .  .'  " 

•Thus  sorrow  opens  the  flood-gates  of  his  eloquence. 
Yet  though  it  less  suggests  abundance.  Graves'  simpler, 
briefer  Not  Dead  is  perhaps  more  effective. 

"  Walking  through  trees  to  cool  my  heat  and  pain 
I  know  that  David's  with  me  here  again. 
All  that  is  simple,  happy,  strong  he  is. 
Caressingly  I  stroke 
Rough  bark  of  the  friendly  oak. 
A  brook  goes  babbling  by  :   the  voice  is  his. 
Turf  burns  with  pleasant  smoke  ; 
I  laugh  at  chaffinch  and  at  primroses  ; 
All  that  is  simple,  happy,  strong,  he  is. 
Over  the  whole  wood  in  a  little  while 
Breaks  his  slow  smile." 

Here  both  young  scoffers  are  in  earnest.  And  though 
Graves  succeeds  best,  one  doubts  whether  he  will  task 
himself  enough  for  greater  things,  whereas  throughout 
Sassoon's  book,  with  its  glib  impressionism  playing  with 

c  33 


somp:  soi.dikr  poets 

worn  themes  in  order  to  make  something  out  of  the  wrong 
side  of  them,  there  is  a  toueh  of  strength,  a  gift  for  suc- 
ceeding to-day  whicli  will  help  liim  when  he  turns  his  mind 
to  its  true  work.  But  on  this  theme  also  Nichols,  in  spite 
of  his  less  steady  hand,  can  match  them  both,  perhaps 
surpass  either. 

OUR  DEAD 

They  have  gone  from  us.     O  no  !  they  are 

The  inmost  essence  of  each  thing  that  is 

Perfect  for  us  ;   they  flame  in  every  star ; 

The  trees  are  emerald  with  their  presences. 

They  arc  not  gone  from  us  ;  they  do  not  roam 

The  How  and  turmoil  of  the  lower  deep, 

But  have  now  made  the  whole  wide  world  their  home, 

And  in  its  loveliness  themselves  they  steep. 

They  fail  not  ever  ;   theirs  is  the  diurn 

Splendour  of  sunny  hill  and  forest  grave  ; 

In  every  rainbow's  glittering  drop  they  burn  ; 

They  dazzle  in  the  massed  clouds'  architrave  ; 

They  chant  on  every  wind,  and  they  return 

In  the  long  roll  of  any  deep  blue  wave. 

The  grief  is  that  a  voice  like  our  own,  a  mind  which  had 
communed  with  ours,  has  been  replaced  by  a  world-wide 
absence  :  travel  where  we  will,  the  well-known  hail  can 
never  suiprise  us  again.  An  end  has  been  reached. 
Rupert  Brooke's  sonnet  gives  splendid  expression  to  the 
strange  awe  of  this  silent,  empty  prospect.  Yet  all  three 
of  these  younger  poets,  in  a  strain  of  slightly  affected 
pantheism,  console  themselves  that  what  they  have  lost 
is  added  to  what  remains — invisibly  present  in  it ;  and 
you  are  set  pondering  whether  inspiration  leavened  the 
literary  convention,  derived  from  Shelley's  Adonais, 
sufficiently  to  give  their  having  done  this,  force  as  a  hint 
of  some  deep  human  trait.  What  place  do  we  really 
think  "  our  dead  "  should  take  in  our  lives  ?  The  poet 
who  would  convince  us  of  the  truth  would  need  to  be  not 

84 


A  HALF  PLEIADE 

only  daring  and  honest  as  these  boys,  but  wise  and 
profoundly  gentle. 

A  shirt  was  clinging  to  Nichols'  image,  but  Sassoon 
appears  in  full  uniform,  equal  to  every  claim  made  by  a 
day  of  action.  Or  is  his  smartness  rather  intellectual 
than  practical  ?  Derision  hardly  consists  with  might 
and  main.  Scorn  abstracts  itself  and  stands  aside.  The 
dapper  mind  is  exasperated  by  fatigue  and  danger,  and 
ever  tries  to  reserve  for  self-realisation  a  few  crumbs  of 
time  and  energy.  Shall  we  not  picture  this  satirist  better 
huddling  under  a  greatcoat  in  some  chilly  dug-out? 
Refusing  to  drop  asleep,  he  muses  of  his  room  in  college, 
or  holds  a  book  he  is  too  tired  to  read  for  a  few  seconds 
near  his  candle-end  before  putting  it  out.  Preoccupied 
with  to-day,  he  is  of  the  best  that  it  recognises  in  itself. 

But  no  !  How  easy  it  is  to  be  unjust  !  Another  little 
book  ^  arrives,  clearer-voiced  ;  in  it  the  self-conscious  grin 
opens  to  a  bitter  laugh,  while  on  its  later  pages  the  soul 
rebels,  repents  and  aspires,  with  grace  and  power. 

BANISHMENT 

I  AM  banished  from  the  patient  men  who  fight. 
They  smote  my  heart  to  pity,  built  my  pride. 
Shoulder  to  aching  shoulder,  side  by  side. 
They  trudged  away  from  life's  broad  wealds  of  light. 
Their  wrongs  were  mine  ;  and  ever  in  my  sight 
They  went  arrayed  in  honour.     But  they  died,  — 
Not  one  by  one  :   and  mutinous  I  cried 
To  those  who  sent  them  out  into  the  night. 

The  darkness  tells  how  vainly  I  have  stri-^en 

To  free  them  from  the  pit  where  they  must  dwell 

In  outcast  gloom  convulsed  and  jagged  and  riven 

By  grappling  guns.     Love  drove  me  to  rebel. 

Love  drives  me  back  to  grope  with  them  through  hell ; 

And  in  their  tortured  eyes  I  stand  forgiven. 

1  Counter- Attack  and  Other  Poems.  Siegfried  Sassoon.  Heinemann. 
2s.  6d. 

35 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

For  a  young  officer  to  refuse  to  lead  more  men  to  death 
may  give  proof  of  truer  courage  than  to  continue  to  do  it 
^vitllout  conviction.  Such  insubordination  is  abundantly 
excused  both  l)y  tlic  facts  that  prompted  it  and  by  the 
action  that  retrieved  it. 

Were  all  men  capable  of  such  mutinies  war  would  cease. 
"War  is  forced  on  many  whose  souls  rebel  against  it  by 
many  who  seek  profit  in  it,  whether  for  themselves,  their 
caste  or  their  nation.  But  these  were  surely  more  numerous 
and  more  dominant  among  our  enemies  than  on  our  side  : 
yet  even  Prussians  are  men.  How  many  of  us  repel  the 
offer  of  an  unfair  advantage  ?  how  many  pounce  on  it  ? 
This  solidarity  of  the  average  man  with  them  gives  war- 
lords their  power,  which  must  be  broken  symbolically  in 
fact  before  the  human  spirit  will  discipline  its  appetite 
for  exploiting  weaker  men.  Grenfells  are  needed  to 
subjugate  this  dragon  ;  but  they  will  recognise  brother 
spirits  among  the  conscientious  objectors,  who  brave  not 
only  the  enemy  but  the  whole  world.  Just  as  Sassoon's 
scorn  for  many  common  attitudes  towards  the  war  is  too 
intellectual  to  inspire  his  best  poetry,  so  censors  of  all 
mankind  discover  a  theoretical  nudity.  Our  dependence 
on  our  neighbours,  even  when  we  are  forced  to  despise 
their  judgment,  is  more  certain  than  our  own  wisdom  can 
be.  Peace  with  its  commerce  was  blighted  vrith.  a  like 
shame,  waste  and  ruthlessness,  yet  who  dissociated  himself 
thus  completely  from  its  prosperity  ?  Then  to  refuse  to 
soil  the  hands  when  millions  must  be  stained  will  appear 
ungenerous,  unless  the  danger  run  in  keeping  them  so 
daintily  clean  exceed  the  common  danger  ;  and  even  then 
the  grace  of  a  divine  humility  maj^  not  be  superfluous. 
History  has  proved,  however,  that  the  Prince  of  Peace 
necessarily  appears  hostile  to  the  average  man  until  he 
rises  from  death,  no  longer  to  reason  about  property  and 
liberty  in  the  world  but  to  appeal  for  service  and  integrity 
In  the  heart. 
36 


A  HALF  PI.EIADE 

Timon  of  Athens  is  frequently  enacted  in  small  on  the 
nursery  boards,  often  with  a  sixth  act,  an  act  as  touching 
and  more  heroic  than  the  prodigal  son's  last,  when  the 
scorned  scorner  returns  to  his  world.  In  the  splendour 
of  early  manhood  such  a  repentant  Timon  is  a  rarer  and 
grander  figure — stooping  his  proud,  honest  head  because 
though  men  are  servile  and  treacherous,  he  who  is  neither 
is  yet  their  brother  in  so  many  other  ways  that  when 
Athens  is  besieged  he  claims  to  share  their  agony  as  a 
privilege.  Such  is  the  figure  gazing  on  which  my  admiring 
eyes  are  misted,  after  reading  this  sonnet  Banishment. 

Less  passion,  and  an  easier  commerce  with  actuality 
would  seem  to  characterise  the  poetry  of  Captain  Robert 
Graves.     His  is  a  taking  smile. 

"  The  child  alone  a  poet  is  : 
Spring  and  Fairyland  are  his. 
Truth  and  Reason  show  but  dim, 
And  all's  poetry  with  him. 
Rhyme  and  music  flow  in  plenty 
For  the  lad  of  one  and  twenty, 
But  Spring  for  him  is  no  more  now 
Than  daisies  to  a  munching  cow  ; 
Just  a  cheery  pleasant  season, 
Daisy  buds  to  Uve  at  ease  on. 
He's  forgotten  how  he  smiled 
And  shrieked  at  snowdrops  when  a  child." 

As  reason  wakes,  lads  find  themselves  asked  to  accept 
not  only  the  dumbfounding  universe  but  monstrous  social ! 
and  political  accumulations  ;    and,  for  the  most  part, 
religious   ideals  tangled  with  fabulous  legend.     For  all  j 
this  there  is  no  simple  and  clear  defence  ;  even  genius  is  1 
at  a  loss  to  create  so  much  as  an  appearance  of  straight- 
forwardness or  to  deduce  a  practical  course  which  you  can 
pretend  is,  or  has  been,  followed.     This  world's  sublimest 
tact  is  the  inept  stare  that  refuses  to  see  difficulties. 
Youngsters  laugh,  however  seriously  minded,  for  laughter 

37 


V 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

is  their  one  escape  from  the  awe-inspiring  immensity  of 
tlic  imposition.  The  more  eompreliensive  the  mind  tlie 
more  kinds  of  rehef  it  seeks  in  laughter.  The  young  man 
who  guys  love,  art,  science,  justice  and  the  Bible  is  usually 
he  who  is  most  naturally  gifted  for  pursuing  ideals  of 
affection,  beauty,  truth,  righteousness  and  revercnce. 
The  middle-aged  forget  what  they  laughed  at  in  youth  : 
for  my  own  part  I  cannot  recall  that  there  was  any  limit 
either  of  decency  or  reverence;  Rabelais  had  not  gone 
too  far.  Aristoplianes  proves  that  Athenian  taste  forbade 
no  jest.  And  while  the  laugh  rings  in  his  ear  no  young 
fellow  of  parts  is  inclined  to  deny  it  a  universal  privilege. 
I  have  even  seen  one  joke  about  toothache  while  writhing 
with  it.  AVe  first  discover  subjects  that  are  no  laughing 
matter  under  the  lash  of  predicted  consequences,  as  we 
accept  servitude  to  social  and  political  ends  ;  then  we 
begin  in  revenge  to  outlaw  indecency  and  irreverence. 
The  young  and  gifted  are  right,  sesthetic  training  and  in- 
tellectual power  must  achieve  an  Attic  freedom.  We  need 
not  wonder  then  to  find  a  young  captain-poet  writing  in  a 
jocular  vein  about  his  own  wounds  and  death,  and  every 
subject  that  touches  him  with  at  all  similar  force.  The 
quality  of  his  laughter  is  all  that  concerns  us  ;  and  this, 
let  me  hasten  to  assure  the  long  faces,  is  irreverent  rather 
than  indecent,  fantastic  rather  than  boisterous.  Now 
faces  are  long  because  they  have  not  laughed  enough,  not 
because  they  have  been  wise. 

The  aesthetic  expression  of  a  comic  sense  is  perhaps  the 
most  difficult  problem  taste  has  to  face.  The  success  of 
a  jest,  as  Shakespeare  said,  "  lies  in  the  ear."  Men  become 
less  ticklish  and  laugh  less  as  life  proceeds.  A  child  so 
enjoys  laughing  it  hardly  needs  a  jest  to  set  it  off,  and 
right  on  up  to  extreme  old  age  no  tears  are  more  grateful 
than  those  squeezed  out  when  both  aching  sides  have  to  be 
held.  But  this  physical  enjoyment  bribes  the  taste  to  be 
indulgent ;  that  we  have  laughed  rebukes  all  censure  of  a 

38 


A  HALF  PLEIADE 

jest,  just  as  not  to  have  laughed  puts  our  judgment  out  of 
court.  But  taste,  Hke  the  soldier,  must  face  all  odds  and 
strive  to  remain  honest  and  delicate,  in  spite  of  the 
natural  man. 

Captain  Robert  Graves'  humour  attains  a  kind  and 
degree  of  success  similar  to  that  of  Robert  Nichols'  effort 
after  beauty — glimpses  and  promises  of  felicity  but  not 
much  more  ;  and  he  also  finds  a  rival  in  Siegfried  Sassoon, 
who  sounds  a  like  note  of  fantastic  levity  in  his  Noah  and 
Policeman.  This  third  star  in  the  tiny  constellation  has 
on  the  whole  the  most  definite  character,  a  ray  whose 
specti-um  is  more  nearly  unique.  JMany  of  his  poems  deal 
with  the  childhood  he  has  so  recently  quit,  in  its  home 
rather  than  its  school  side  ;  he  seems  to  remain  constantly 
aware  of  his  knickerbocker  self  and  of  the  family  he  made 
one  of.  Nonsense  and  laughter  are  still  the  happy  relief 
from  a  probably  more  mature  daily  habit,  which  his  rank 
might  seem  to  infer — relief  even  after  the  most  terrible 
experiences  of  trench  life. 


Through  long  nursery  nights  he  stood 

By  my  bed  unwearying, 

Loomed  gigantic,  formless,  queer. 

Purring  in  my  haunted  ear 

That  same  hideous  nightmare  thing, 

Talking  as  he  lapped  my  blood, 

In  a  voice  cruel  and  flat. 

Saying  for  ever :   '  Cat !  .  .  .  Cat !  .  .  .  Cat !  .  .  .' 

Morphia-drowsed,  again  I  lay 

In  a  crater  by  High  Wood  : 

He  was  there  with  straddling  legs. 

Staring  eyes  as  big  as  eggs, 

Purring  as  he  lapped  my  blood. 

His  black  bulk  darkening  the  day — 

With  a  voice  cruel  and  flat, 

'  Cat ! ...  Cat ! ...  Cat !  '  he  said.     '  Cat ! . . .  Cat ! . . .' 


39 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 


ESCAPE 

"August  G,  1916.  Officer  previously  reported  died  of  wounds, 
now  reported  wounded : — Graves,  Captain  R.,  Royal  Welsh  Fusiliers." 

But  I  xca.f  dead,  an  hour  or  more. 

I  woke  when  I'd  already  passed  the  door 

That  Cerberus  guards,  and  half-way  do\Mi  the  road 

To  Lethe,  as  an  old  Greek  signpost  showed  .  .  . 

Dear  Lady  Proserpme  .  .  . 

Cleared  my  poor  buzzing  head  and  sent  me  baek  .  .  . 

Breathless,  with  leaping  heart  along  the  track. 

After  me  roared  and  clattered  angry  hosts 

Of  demons,  heroes,  and  policemen-ghosts  .  .  . 

There's  still  some  morphia  that  I  bought  on  leave. 

Then  swiftly  Cerberus'  wide  mouth  I  cram 

With  army  biscuit  smeared  with  ration  jam  ;  .  .  . 

A  crash  ;  the  beast  blocks  up  the  corridor 

With  monstrous  hairy  carcase,  red  and  dun — 

Too  late !    for  I've  sped  through. 

O  Life  !     O  sun  ! 

Tliis  vivid  resilience  occurs  not  only  after  the  most 
cruel  physical  agony,  but  during  the  long  wearing-down  of 
winter  in  the  trenches — as  difficult  to  bear  as  protracted 
toothache. 


TO  ROBERT  NICHOLS 

From  Frise  on  the  Somme  in  February,  1917,  in  answer  to  a  letter 
saying  :  "  I  am  just  finishing  my  Faun's  Holiday.  I  wish  you  were 
here  to  feed  him  with  cherries." 

Here  by  a  snow-bound  river 
In  scrapen  holes  we  shiver, 
And  like  old  bitterns  we 
Boom  to  you  plaintively  : 
Robert,  how  can  I  rhyme 
Verses  for  your  desire — 
Sleek  fauns  and  cherry-time, 
Vague  music  and  green  trees, 
Hot  sun  and  gentle  breeze, 

40 


A  HALF  PLEIADE 

England  in  June  attire 
And  life  born  young  again 
For  your  gay  goatish  brute  .  .  . 
Lips  dark  with  juicy  stain, 
Ears  hung  with  bobbing  fruit  ? 
Why  should  I  keep  him  time  ? 
Why  in  this  cold  and  rime, 
Where  even  to  dream  is  pain  ? 
No,  Robert,  there's  no  reason; 
Cherries  are  out  of  season. 
Ice  grips  at  branch  and  root. 
And  singing  birds  are  mute. 

His  range  is  from  Strong  Beer  to  Christ,  but  is  rather  of 
theme  than  of  mood,  another  hint  of  a  more  set  character. 
Here  is  some  half-mystical  nonsense  on  the  temptation 
in  the  wilderness  : 

"  He  held  communion 
With  the  she-pelican 
Of  lonely  piety. 
Basilisk,  cockatrice. 
Flocked  to  his  homilies, 
With  mail  of  dread  device,  .  .  . 
With  eager  dragon  eyes  ; 
And  ever  with  him  went  .  .  . 
Comrade,  with  ragged  coat, 
Gaunt  ribs — poor  innocent —  .  .  . 
The  guileless  old  scapegoat ; 
For  forty  nights  and  days 
Followed  in  Jesus'  ways. 
Sure  guard  behind  Him  kept. 
Tears  like  a  lover  wept." 

He  confesses  that  even  at  trys tings  with  a  lady  a  third 
is  always  present, 

THE  SPOIL-SPORT 

My  familiar  ghost  again 
Comes  to  see  what  he  can  see. 
Critic,  son  of  Conscious  Brain, 
Spying  on  our  privacy. 

41 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

The  passages  already  quoted  prove  that,  as  a  poet,  he 
is  disinclined  to  think  effort  worth  while,  and  easily 
consents  to  imperfections  characteristic  of  that  phase  of 
skill  which  distinguishes  play  from  a  profession.  Colin 
Clout  is  more  gentlemanly  than  Paradise  Lost,  even  though 
it  be  less  worthy  of  man. 

' '  Wiiat  could  be  dafter 
Than  John  Skelton's  laughter  ? 
What  sound  more  tenderly 
Than  his  pretty  poetry  ? 
So  where  to  rank  old  Skelton  ? 
He  was  no  monstrous  Milton 
Nor  wrote  no  Paradise  Lost, 
So  wondered  at  by  most, 
Praised  so  disdainfully, 
C  omposed  so  painfully. 
He  struck  what  ]\Iilton  missed, 
Milling  an  English  grist 
With  homely  turn  and  twist. 
He  was  English  through  and  through, 
Not  Greek,  nor  French,  nor  Jew, 
Though  well  their  tongues  he  knew.  ..." 

Yet,  as  good  old  Skelton  pled  : 
"  For  though  my  rhime  be  ragged, 
Tattered  and  jagged, 
Rudely  rain-beaten. 
Rusty  and  moth-eaten. 
If  ye  take  well  therewith, 
It  hath  in  it  some  pith." 

A  just  claim  ;  besides  there  is  something  ideal  about 
absence  of  strain  ;  greatness  has  in  Milton  undoubtedly 
taken  itself  a  shade  too  seriously.  Howev^er,  in  the  end 
one  perhaps  likes  our  humorist  best  when  he  is  gravest. 

1915 

I've  watched  the  Season  passing  slow,  so  slow. 
In  fields  between  La  Bassee  and  Bethune  ; 
Primroses  and  the  first  warm  day  of  Spring, 
Red  poppy  floods  of  June, 

42 


A  HALF  PLEIADE 

August,  and  yellowing  Autumn,  so 

To  Winter  nights  knee-deep  in  mud  or  snow. 

And  you've  been  everything. 

Dear,  you've  been  everything  that  I  most  lack 

In  these  soul-deadening  trenches — pictures,  books. 

Music,  the  quiet  of  an  English  wood. 

Beautiful  comrade-looks. 

The  narrow,  bouldered  mountain- track. 

The  broad,  full-bosomed  ocean,  green  and  black, 

And  Peace,  and  all  that's  good. 

Yes,  he  is  the  man  who  does  not  forget,  whom  to-day 
does  not  absorb ;  he  remains  conscious  of  a  crowd  of  younger 
selves,  and  of  those  distant  places  which  have  coloured  his 
thought.  At  the  front  the  absent  are  "  everything," 
and  after  death  "  evei-ything  "  becomes  the  lost  friend. 
A  complex  and  delicately  poised  nature,  but  perhaps 
lacking  the  passion  and  impetus  that  can  shape  large  and 
difficult  themes.  Watts  might  have  painted  a  young  man 
leading  a  child  through  Gehenna  and  preventing  its  terror 
by  keeping  it  laughing,  but  such  allegories  are  not  neces- 
sary or  obvious  enough  for  successful  plastic  treatment 
even  by  a  great  painter.  Christophe's  statue,  Le  Masque, 
is  better  conceived  ;  a  smiling  artificial  visage  still  fronts 
the  world  from  which  the  real  agonised  head  has  fallen 
back.     From  one  view — 

"  vois  ce  souris  fin  et  voluptueux 
Oti  la  fatuite  promene  son  extase  "  ; 

while  from  the  other — 

"  voici,  crispee  atrocement 
La  veritable  tete,  et  la  sincere  face 
Renversee  a  I'abri  de  la  face  qui  ment," 

as  Baudelaire  describes  the  well-known  masterpiece  in  the 
Jardin  des  Tuileries.  Only  I  think  to  substitute  a  man 
for  the  woman  would  heighten  the  effect,  and  for  this  the 

43 


SOME  SOT.DTER  POETS 

imagination  can  relieve  our  young  captain  of  his  accoutre- 
ments and  exeliange  liis  gas  mask  Tor  one  wliieli  lauglis. 
Yes,  nimble  youth  plays  M'ith  Hl'e  and  death,  and  intcr- 
clianges  agony  with  ecstasy,  even  as  laughter  sheds  tears 
for  very  pleasiH'e. 

Those  who  shall  gaze  back  a  century  hence  may  discern 
rather  in  Nichols  than  in  Sassoon  or  Graves  the  poet's 
mind  that  is  independent  of  time  and  approaciies  all 
human  circumstance  with  the  kinsman's  joy  or  pain.  It 
will  depend  on  what  they  are  yet  to  write,  which  of  these 
three  those  distant  readers  are  best  able  to  strip  and  set 
free  in  the  Palaestra  of  immortal  youth  with  Grenfell  and 
Brooke — companions  meet  for  those  who  read  with  Plato 
or  those  who,  a-horseback,  passed  Pheidias  on  the  road, 
and  who,  also,  most  of  them,  matured  and  became  differ- 
ent when  Death  had  picked  his  favourites  out. 


4,4, 


R  E.  VERNfeDE 

Self-praise  is  no  recommendation,  neither  is  a  pro- 
fession of  patriotism  ;  besides,  the  Germans  have  raised 
such  a  pother  over  theirs  that  silence  would  seem  enjoined 
on  all  self-respecting  men,  for  fear  of  even  distantly  re- 
sembling those  blatant  deluded  souls.  "  The  last  resource 
of  a  scoundrel,"  Doctor  Johnson  called  these  professions 
of  devotion  to  one's  country  ;  and  Gilbert  laughed  them 
down  with  his — 

"  In  spite  of  all  temptations 
To  belong  to  other  nations.  ..." 

We  are  what  we  are  in  this  respect,  neither  by  choice 
nor  yet  by  merit,  but  by  necessity.  Most  of  us  could  not 
betray  our  country  even  if  we  were  born  treacherous,  the 
situation  would  be  too  strong  for  us  ;  and  it  is  only  some 
unusual  situation  which  can  make  praise  for  patriotic 
action  due  to  a  good  man,  or  turn  a  weak  man  into  a 
traitor.  No  doubt  we  were  all  pro- German  to  the  extent 
of  our  failings  ;  for  nothing  cumbers  or  hinders  a  country 
more  than  the  shortcomings  common  to  the  majority  of 
its  people.  Yet  how  easily  intelligent  men  are  lured 
away  to  indulge  in  this  odious  rhetoric  !  How  sane  the 
common  soldier  is  in  this  ;  "  Blighty  "Ms  his  name  for 
the  mother  isle.  No  name  could  be  more  exactly  de- 
served ;  for  a  country  is  always,  by  collective  action, 
blighting  the  best  hopes  and  virtues  of  its  sons  ;  and  yet 
they  feel  for  it  the  affection  expressed  in  a  pet  name  as  for 
some  impossibe  old  landlady  who  has  contributed  to  all 
the  happiness  they  have  known. 

^"Blighty"  is  derived  from  the  Arabic  and  hence  Urdu  {camp 
language)  of  the  Mogul  soldiery,  Vilayat  meaning  a  country,  which  has 
come  in  India  to  designate  England  or  Europe,  and  the  adjective 
Vilayati,  English.  But  the  British  soldier  in  adopting  the  word  for 
home  or  England  accepted  also^half  humorously  the  sense  associated 
with  it3  deformed  pronunciation. 

45 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

R.  E.  Vern^de  was  a  peace  lover  quite  unfamiliar  with 
weapons,  over  forty  and  married,  yet  he  enlisted  in  1914. 
He  was  a  man  of  remarkable  intellectual  and  moral 
delicacy,  and  yet  his  muse  retm'ns  to  this  theme  of 
patriotism,  as  a  moth  haunts  a  candle.  He  had  deserved 
esteem  for  several  works  in  prose,  and  his  friends  made 
sure  that  in  time  a  more  general  and  generous  acknow- 
ledgment would  accrue  to  him.  He  was  of  French 
descent,  and  these  poems  ^  show  a  fine  sense  for  literary 
craftsmanship.  The  war  made  a  poet  of  him,  for  the 
verses  written  prior  to  it  are  comparatively  unambitious. 
Perhaps  the  lyrical  impulse  aroused  was  younger  than 
the  rest  of  his  mind,  or  was  it  some  French  traditional 
reliance  on  trumpet-calls  that  set  him  toot-tooting  ? 

"  Oh  War-lord  of  the  Western  Huns — that  Army  of  Sir 

John's 
Your  legions  know  it,  do  they  not  ?     They  drove  it  back 

from  Mons — 
'Twas   small   enough  .  .  .  too   small   perhaps  .  .  .  the 

British  line  is  thin  .  .  . 
It  won't  seem  quite  so  little  when  it's  marching  through 

Berlin." 

Surely  Vernede  cannot  have  voiced  this  boast  for  his 
own  satisfaction.  Do  we  listen  to  one  for  whom  "  any- 
thing pretentious  and  pompous  was  a  target  "  when  we 
read — 

"  The  sea  is  God's — and  England, 
England  shall  keep  it  free  "  ? 

Surely  such  things  arc  intended  to  reach  duller  ears 
than  his  own.  Imagine  this  ardent  dreamer,  suddenly 
surrounded  with  "  Tommies,"  gaining  rapid  ascendancy 
over  them  by  his  moral  elevation,  but  at  the  same  time 

^  War  Poems  and  Other  Verses.  By  R.  E.  Veniede.  Heiiiemanu. 
33.  Gd.     Quotations  by  permission  of  Mrs  C.  H.  Vernede. 

46 


R.  E.  VERNEDE 

aching  to  express  their  inarticulate  enthusiasms  for  them. 
An  excellent  motive,  but  the  Muses  have  decreed  that 
words  and  images  must  fascinate  us  before  we  can  enthral 
others  with  them.  We  are  told  that  "  he  insists  on 
keeping  sharp  the  blade  of  indignation  " ;  but  the 
Germans  did  that  for  us  far  better.  Indignation  has  a 
grand  force,  but  one  which  must  owe  nothing  to  self- 
culture  ;  to  nurse  it  is  to  corrupt  it — is  indeed  one  of  the 
knavish  tricks  of  Prussian  policy. 

I  cannot  help  feeling  that  the  Kaiser  has  done  for  the 
word  "  God  "  very  much  what  "  liber  alles  "  has  done  for 
professions  of  patriotism.  Yet  Vernede  raps  it  out  with 
all  the  assurance  of  a  bishop.  To-day  it  either  means  too 
much  or  too  little  for  frequent  use,  save  when  addressing 
those  who,  like  children,  belong  to  an  earlier  world.  The 
idea  of  Providence  has  become  too  simple,  too  many 
relations  are  implied  to  be  so  grouped,  just  as  the  idea  of 
England  has  become  too  complex  for  Britannia's  outfit. 
The  country  that  triumphed  over  Napoleon  was  worse  than 
an  enemy  to  masses  of  her  people  under  Castlereagh,  and 
this  and  other  contradictions  subsist,  though  they  are  not 
quite  so  glaring. 

Vernede  had  been  used  to  complain  playfully  that  life 
was  humdrum — that  is,  he  was  one  of  those  many  gifted 
men  of  whom  England,  to  her  shame,  made  no  good  use, 
damping  their  energies  with  the  huge  sponge  of  her 
lethargic  materialism.  His  old  schoolfellow,  Mr  G.  K. 
Chesterton,  has  told  us :  "No  man  could  look  more  lazy 
and  no  man  was  more  active.  He  would  move  as  swiftly 
as  a  leopard  from  something  like  sleep  to  something  too 
unexpected  to  be  called  gymnastics.  It  was  so  that  he 
passed  from  the  English  country  life  he  loved  so  much, 
with  its  gardening  and  dreaming,  to  an  ambush  and  a 
German  gun." 

He  published  two  or  three  not  quite  successful  novels, 
visited  India  and  Canada,  and  wrote  pleasantly  of  what 

47 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

he  had  seen.  He  played  tennis,  gardened  and  occasionally 
walked  many  miles  very  fast.  But  none  of  these  things 
could  al)sorb  him.  He  was  grateful  for  them,  but  not 
content  with  them.  In  thanking  your  country  for  such  a 
life,  a  slight  extravagance  of  compliment  is  gracious,  but 
he  would  probably  never  have  used  it  if  she  had  not 
suddenly  accepted  from  him  the  total  dedication  of 
himself ;  he  would  have  felt  restrained  by  the  fact  that 
though  she  kept  him  and  his  peers  in  clover,  she  was 
keeping  far  greater  numbers  in  want. 


A  PETITION 

All  that  a  man  might  ask  thou  has  given  me,  England , 
Birth-right  and  happy  childhood's  long  heartsease, 

And  love  whose  range  is  deep  beyond  all  sounding, 
And  wider  than  all  seas. 

A  heart  to  front  the  world  and  find  God  in  it, 
Eyes  blind  enow,  but  not  too  blind  to  see 

The  lovely  things  behind  the  dross  and  darkness, 
And  lovelier  things  to  be. 

And  friends  whose  loyalty  time  nor  death  shall  weaken, 
And  quenchless  hope  and  laughter's  golden  store  ; 

All  that  a  man  might  ask  thou  has  given  me,  England, 
Yet  grant  thou  one  thing  more  : 

That  now  when  envious  foes  would  spoil  thy  splendour, 

Unversed  in  arms,  a  dreamer  such  as  I 
May  in  thy  ranks  be  deemed  not  all  unworthy, 

England,  for  thee  to  die. 

This  chance  to  use  himself  thoroughly  and  to  adventure 
greatly  filled  him  with  enthusiasm  and  hope.  Emotion 
is  simple-minded,  and  for  a  moment  his  world  seemed  all 
of  one  piece  ;  as  broad  meadows  may  be  run  together  by 

48 


R.  E.  VERNEDE 

a  flood,  everything  was  merged  in  a  shining  mirror  of  the 
uphfted  sky.  Still  it  is  reassuring  to  notice  by  the  dates 
of  his  poems  that  his  landmarks  were  reappearing  and 
that  Germany  and  England  are  no  longer  just  black 
and  white.  By  December,  1916,  he  strikes  truer,  less 
complacent  notes : 

"We  have  failed — we  have  been  more  weak  than  these 
betrayers — 
In  strength  or  in  faith  we  have  failed ;  our  pride  was  vain. 
How  can  we  rest  who  have  not  slain  the  slayers  ? 

What  peace  for  us,  who  have  seen  Thy  children  slain  ? 

Hark,  the  roar  grows  .  .  .  the  thunders  reawaken — 
We  ask  one  thing,  Lord,  only  one  thing  now  : 

Hearts  high  as  theirs,  who  went  to  death  unshaken, 
Courage  like  theirs  to  make  and  keep  their  vow. 

To  stay  not  till  these  hosts  whom  mercies  harden, 
Who  know  no  glory  save  of  sword  and  fire. 

Find  in  our  fire  the  splendour  of  Thy  pardon. 
Meet  from  our  steel  the  mercy  they  desire.  .  .  . 

Then  to  our  children  there  shall  be  no  handing 
Of  fates  so  vain — of  passions  so  abhorr'd  .  .  . 

But   Peace  .  .  .  the   Peace  which  passeth  understand- 
ing ..  . 
Not  in  our  time  .  .  .  but  in  their  time,  O  Lord." 

And  later  still  we  have  : 


A  LISTENING  POST 

The  sun's  a  red  ball  in  the  oak 

And  all  the  grass  is  grey  with  dew. 
Awhile  ago  a  blackbird  spoke  — 

He  didn't  know  the  world's  askew. 

D  49 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

And  yonder  rifleman  and  I 

Wait  licrc  behind  the  misty  trees, 

To  shoot  the  first  man  that  goes  by, 
Our  rifles  ready  on  our  knees. 


IIoAV  could  he  know  that  if  we  fail 
The  world  may  lie  in  ehains  for  years 

And  England  be  a  bygone  Tale 

And  right  be  wrong,  and  laughter  tears  ? 

Strange  that  this  bird  sits  there  and  sings 
While  we  must  only  sit  and  plan — 

Who  are  so  mueh  the  higher  things — 
The  murder  of  our  fellow-man.  .  .  . 


But  maybe  God  will  cause  to  be  — 

Who  brought  forth  sweetness  from  the  strong — 
Out  of  our  discords  harmony 

Sweeter  than  that  bird's  song. 

Though  the  rousing  of  Vernede's  lyrical  impulse  was 
at  first  coincident  with  loss  of  discrimination,  and  might 
be  condemned  as  an  attempt  to  shout  with  the  crowd, 
I  find  its  excuse,  if  not  its  justification,  in  that  ardent 
sympathy  that  at  first  wraps  the  confused  soul  in  cloud, 
but  will,  like  a  late  September  morning  b}^  10  a.m.,  grow 
glorious  as  a  summer  day.  Readers  only  feel  the  insult 
of  not  being  treated  as  an  author's  equals,  in  proportion 
as  they  are  his  peers.  Now  Vernede's  peers  can  look 
after  themselves,  but  the  men  he  looked  after  in  that  hell 
at  the  front  needed  him,  and  needed  such  as  he  was,  more 
than  any  other  kind  of  ofiicer.  He  was  not  artist  enough 
to  reconcile  both  these  claims,  but  he  chose  the  most 
important.  All  that  he  says  of  his  friend  we  can  safely 
transfer  to  himself ;  the  testimony  of  his  brother  officers 
is  our  warrant. 

50 


R.  E.  VERNEDE 


To  F.  G.  S. 

("  Seriously  wounded  ") 

Peaks  that  you  dreamed  of,  hills  your  heart  has  climbed 
on, 

Never  your  feet  shall  climb,  your  eyes  shall  see  ; 
All  your  life  long  you  must  tread  lowly  places. 

Limping  for  England  ;  well — so  let  it  be. 

We  know  your  heart's  too  high  for  any  grudging. 

More  than  she  asked,  you  gladly  gave  to  her  : 
What  tho'  its  streets  you'll  tramp  instead  of  snow-fields, 

You'll  be  the  cheeriest,  as  you  always  were. 

Yes,  and  you'll  shoulder  all  our  packs — we  know  you — 
And  none  will  guess  you're  wearied  night  or  day — 

Yes,  you'll  lift  lots  of  lame  dogs  over  fences. 
Who  might  have  lifted  you,  for  that's  your  way. 

All  your  life  long — no  matter — so  you've  chosen. 

Pity  you  ?     Never — that  were  waste  indeed — 
Who  up  hills  higher  than  the  Alps  you  loved  so 

All  your  life  long  will  point  the  way  and  lead. 

Such  men  are  mature  in  a  sense  that  most  of  us  are  not. 
The  joy  of  recognising  their  characters,  the  joy  felt  in 
these  verses,  is  in  quality  like  that  we  might  receive  from 
a  fine  picture  in  which  a  strong  man  and  a  number  of  lads 
were  shown  hauling  a  boat  up  the  beach — ^their  muscular 
developments  contrasted,  their  attitudes  rhythmically 
applied  to  a  common  task.  So,  like  a  charm,  the  pre- 
sense  of  these  grown-up  souls  organises  and  increases  our 
strength.  Even  Vernede's  tiTimpet-calls  give  me  glimpses 
of  a  man  whole-heartedly  playing  with  children  in  time  he 
was  free  to  give  to  some  congenial  hobby.  What  though 
his  boyishness  be  a  little  out  of  fashion  as  compared  with 
theirs  !    He  succeeds   and   keeps   them  even-tempered, 

51 


SOME  SOT.DTER  POETS 

brave  and  loyal.  Several  ol"  these  poems  witness  that 
he  saw  his  "  Tommies  "  as  they  were.  What  if  the  battle 
songs  he  wrote  arc  not  siieh  as  can  ever  quite  win  their 
favour,  and  can  hardly  better  content  a  more  refined 
public  ?  since  for  those,  as  for  these,  his  life  and  death 
were  his  best  poem.  He  had  been  ready  to  appreciate 
all  his  men's  virtues  and  to  make  even  all  their  de- 
ficiencies. Tliey  were  his  inspiration  and  he  was  theirs. 
This  give  and  take  between  the  leader  and  the  led  is  more 
trustworthy  than  the  rigidity  of  discipline,  replacing  it  by 
life — a  wonder  of  creation  comparable  to  a  master  work  in 
art.  Augmented  living  ought  perhaps  alwa\s  to  precede 
a  literary  production  which  should  be  the  spirit's  paean  for 
victory — for  wider  and  more  delicate  lelations  achieved — 
though  at  times  it  has  been  the  bitter  sons  of  the  van- 
quishcd,  declaring  that  his  loss  is  greater  and  other  than 
the  victor's  gain.  That  grander  pulse  was  throbbing 
through  Vernede's  veins,  as  his  more  frequent  bursts  of 
song  and  ever  truer  note  testify  ;  the  poet  liberated  in 
him  was  rehearsing  the  adequate  lay  which  we  shall  never 
hear — and  indeed  the  enemy  did  not  gain  by  his  death 
anything  commensurate  with  what  we  have  lost,  even 
though  such  losses  should  kindle  us  more  finely  than  that 
masterpiece  unheard,  unsung  and  for  ever  overdue  could 
have  done  !  In  two  stanzas  to  his  wife  which  now 
dedicate  the  book,  Vernede  himself  underlines  the  differ- 
ence between  promises  and  deeds,  between  words  and  the 
seal  of  death  : 

"  What  shall  I  bring  to  you.  wife  of  mine, 

When  I  come  back  from  the  war  ? 
A  ribbon  your  dear  brown  hair  to  twine  ? 

A  shawl  from  a  Berlin  store  ? 
Say,  shall  I  choose  you  some  Prussian  hack 

When  the  Uhlans  we  o'erwhclm  ? 
Shall  I  bring  you  a  Potsdam  goblet  back 

And  the  crest  from  a  prince's  helm  ? 

52 


R.  E.  VERNEDE 

Little  you'd  care  what  I  laid  at  your  feet, 

Ribbon  or  crest  or  shawl — 
What  if  I  bring  you  nothing,  sweet, 

Nor  maybe  come  home  at  all  ? 
Ah,  but  you'll  know,  Brave  Heart,  you'll  know 

Two  things  I'll  have  kept  to  send  : 
Mine  honour  for  which  you  bade  me  go 

And  my  love — my  love  to  the  end." 


53 


SORLEY 

When  we  first  admire  a  person  after  death  we  are  apt  to 
feel  a  kind  of  joy  that  he  is  now  unalterable,  not  to  be 
pottered  over  or  finicked  with  or  painted  out  for  some 
supposed  improvement.  In  spite  of  reason  we  cannot 
really  regret  Keats'  maturity,  much  less  his  old  age.  As 
we  have  been  prevented  by  the  centuries  from  sitting  on 
the  jury  which  banished  Pheidias,  we  dote  on  his  maimed 
and  footless  Theseus,  and  doubt  whether  the  marble  has 
not  been  improved  by  rough-handed  Time ;  while  we 
neglect  or  patronise  the  young  sculptor  in  whom  a  like 
creative  force  struggles  against  the  odds,  with  our  long- 
established  apathy.  Only  if  we  have  followed  its  growth 
with  all  our  hopes,  a  life  seems  broken  through,  snapped 
off  and  its  promise  wasted  by  early  death.  Then  we 
wonder  whether  it  is  civilisation  or  barbarism  that  defends 
itself  at  such  a  cost.  And  the  failure  to  preserve  at  least 
those  who  were  creatively  gifted  from  exposure,  seems 
proof  that  our  foresight  was  at  fault,  or  our  scale  of  values 
inadequate.!  Sorley,  the  youngest,  and  it  may  be  the 
most  hope-inspiring  of  our  poet  soldiers,  has  set  me 
musing  thus.  He  is  so  fine,  Death  seems  to  have  saved 
him  from  misshaping  Life. 

His  language  is  poor  and  thin,  but  it  moves  powerfully, 
and  constantly  suggests  organic  forms.  This  is  most 
unlooked  for  in  a  tyro.  Sensuous  images  are  extra- 
ordinarily persisted  in,  and  as  strangely  few.  Rain,  wind, 
running,  one  particular  spot  on  the  downs  where  four  grass 
tracks  separate  east,  v/est,  south  and  north,  from  a  tall, 
weathered  sign-post,  and  the  "  red-capped  town "  of 
Marlborough,  where  he  was  at  school — these  images 
return  and  return,  ever  freshly  applied  ;   but  there  is  no 

^  Marlborough  and  Other  Verses,  etc.  C.  H.  Sorley.  Cambridge 
University  Press.  Quotations  by  permission  of  Professor  W.  R. 
Sorley. 

55 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

hint  of  tlio  noitrhboiirinnr  Savernake  forest,  it  liad  too 
much  the  eliaraeter  of  liostiUty  to  free  movement.  This 
young  mind  runs  tirelessly,  with  ever  revived  pleasure, 
through  an  open  wet  bleak  grey  land,  as  once  the  boy 
clad  only  in  jersey  and  shorts  raced  over  the  dim  do\vns 
cloaked  in  rain. 

THE  SONG  OF  THE  UNGIRT  RUNNERS 

Wk  swing  ungirded  hips, 
And  lightened  arc  our  eyes, 
The  rain  is  on  our  lips, 
We  do  not  run  for  prize, 
We  know  not  whom  we  trust 
Nor  whitherward  we  fare, 
But  we  run  because  we  must 
Through  the  great  wide  air. 

Tlie  waters  of  the  seas 
Are  troubled  as  by  storm. 
The  tempest  strips  the  trees 
And  does  not  leave  them  warm. 
Does  the  tearing  tempest  pause  ? 
Do  the  tree -tops  ask  it  why  ? 
So  we  run  without  a  cause 
'Neath  the  big  bare  sky. 

The  rain  is  on  our  lips, 
We  do  not  run  for  prize. 
But  the  storm  the  water  whips 
And  the  wave  howls  to  the  skies. 
The  winds  arise  and  strike  it 
And  scatter  it  like  sand. 
And  we  run  because  we  like  it 
Through  the  broad  bright  land. 

The  felicity  here  is  of  the  rarest  and  finest  kind,  and 
shapes  the  main  form  and  rhjdhm  ;  their  inevitability 
sweeps  us  away  and  convinces,  in  spite  of  no  matter  what 
predisposition  to  stickle  over  details. 

56 


SORLEY 

The  downs  have  another  hold  on  this  poet ;  not  only- 
are  they  good  to  course  at  a  long  swinging  run,  they  have 
preserved  huge  stones,  earthworks  and  chiselled  flints 
that  tell  of  prehistoric  lives. 

STONES 

This  field  is  almost  white  with  stones 
That  cumber  all  its  tliirsty  crust. 
And  underneath,  I  know,  are  bones 
And  all  around  is  death  and  dust. 

O,  in  these  bleached  and  buried  bones 
Was  neither  love  nor  faith  nor  thought. 

But  like  the  wind  in  this  bleak  place 
Bitter  and  bleak  and  sharp  they  grew. 
And  bitterly  they  ran  their  race, 
A  brutal  bad  unkindly  crew  : 

Souls  like  the  dry  earth,  hearts  like  stone. 
Brains  like  the  barren  bramble-tree. 
Stern,  sterile,  senseless,  mute,  unknown — 
But  bold,  O,  bolder  far  than  we  ! 

Against  this  wet,  bleak,  strenuous  background  of  his 
predilection  the  young  man's  thought  is  astonishingly 
keen,  fresh  and  mature. 

"  I,"  he  says  in  the  title  poem,  Marlborough, 

"  Have  had  my  moments  there,  when  I  have  been 
Unwittingly  aware  of  something  more. 
Some  beautiful  aspect,  that  I  had, seen 
With  mute  unspeculative  eyes  before  ; 

Have  had  my  times,  when,  though  the  earth  did  wear 
Her  self- same  trees  and  grasses,  I  could  see 
The  revelation  that  is  always  there. 
But  somehow  is  not  always  clear  to  me." 

Here  he  introduces  as  an  image  "  Jacob's  return  from 
exile,"  and  ends  it : 

57 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

"For  God  had  wrestled  with  him,  and  was  gone. 
He  looked  around,  and  only  Ciod  remained. 
The  dawn,  the  desert,  he  and  God  were  one. 
— And  Esau  came  to  meet  him  travel- stained. 

So,  there,  when  sunset  made  the  downs  look  new 
And  earth  gave  up  her  eolours  to  the  sky, 
And  far  away  the  little  eity  grew 
Half  into  sight,  new-visioned  was  my  eye. 

I,  who  have  lived,  and  trod  her  lovely  earth, 
Raced  with  her  winds  and  listened  to  her  birds, 
Have  cared  but  little  for  their  worldly  worth 
Nor  sought  to  put  my  passion  into  words. 

But  now  it's  different ;   and  I  have  no  rest 
Because  my  hand  must  search,  dissect  and  spell 
The  beauty  that  is  better  not  expressed. 
The  thing  that  all  can  feel,  but  none  can  tell." 

Words  halt  behind  thought  and  feeling.  After  vision 
and  inspiration  have  been  aroused  by  experience,  even 
the  best  poetiy  may  seem  lame.  But  Sorley  was  con- 
scious of  another  reason  why  "  Beauty  is  better  not 
expressed."  He  knew  that  it  would  not  be  welcomed. 
He  had  reached  that  stage  when  the  soul  reacts  against 
parents,  masters  and  the  world  that  has  fostered  it.  He 
was  a  rebel,  an  unusually  clear-eyed  and  affectionate 
rebel,  who  did  not  only  feel  that  things  were  wrong,  but 
could  point  them  out  with  un  unerring  finger. 

"  O  come  and  see,  it's  such  a  sight. 
So  many  boys  all  doing  right : 
To  see  them  underneath  the  yoke, 
Blindfolded  by  the  elder  folk. 
Move  at  a  most  impressive  rate 
Along  the  way  that  is  called  straight. 
O,  it  is  comforting  to  know 
They're  in  the  way  they  ought  to  go. 

58 


SORLEY 

But  don't  you  think  it's  far  more  gay 
To  see  them  slowly  leave  the  way 
And  limp  and  lose  themselves  and  fall  ? 
O,  that's  the  nicest  thing  of  all. 
I  love  to  see  this  sight,  for  then 
I  know  they  are  becoming  men, 
And  they  are  tiring  of  the  shrine 
Where  things  are  really  not  divine. 

I  do  not  know  if  it  seems  brave 

The  youthful  spirit  to  enslave, 

And  hedge  about  lest  it  should  grow. 

I  don't  know  if  it's  better  so 

In  the  long  end.     I  only  know 

That  when  I  have  a  son  of  mine, 

He  shan't  be  made  to  droop  and  pine, 

Bound  down  and  forced  by  rule  and  rod 

To  serve  a  God  who  is  no  God. 

But  I'll  put  custom  on  the  shelf 

And  make  him  find  his  God  himself. 

Perhaps  he'll  find  Him  in  a  tree 

Some  hollow  trunk,  where  you  can  see. 

Perhaps  the  daisies  in  the  sod 

Will  open  out  and  show  him  God. 

Or  will  he  meet  him  in  the  roar 

Of  breakers  as  they  beat  the  shore  ? 

Or  in  the  spiky  stars  that  shine  ? 

Or  in  the  rain  (where  I  found  mine)  ? 

Or  in  the  city's  giant  moan  ? 

— A  God  who  will  be  all  his  own, 

To  whom  he  can  address  a  prayer 

And  love  him  for  he  is  so  fair. 

And  see  with  eyes  that  are  not  dim 

And  build  a  temple  m.eet  for  him." 

Yes,  the  actual  world  is  more  hospitable  and  more 
inspiring  than  the  scenery,  the  panorama  that  English 
conventions  paint  and  hang  round  the  young,  in  part  to 
help  and  prepare  them,  but  in  part  also  to  delude  them 
and  disguise  our  own  fears  and  failures.  Truth  provides 
a  roomier  house  than  the  average  Englishman  has  hired 

59 


SO:\[E  SOLDIER  rOETS 

for  his  bojrs.  Yet  Sorley  knew  and  felt  that  he  had  been 
iinusiially  hicky  in  this  respect.  After  leaving  school  he 
went  to  Germany  for  some  months,  and  loved  the  life  he 
saw  in  Mecklcnberg  Schwerin.  lie  was  reading  the 
Odyssey,  no  longer  one  hundred  lines  at  a  time,  but  for  his 
own  pleasure,  in  long  draughts,  and  was  struck  by  the 
resemblance  of  the  life  he  found  about  him,  in  that  foreign 
place,  to  that  he  was  reading  about.  He  saw  many 
things  in  Germany  that  were  wrong,  but  it  seemed  to  him 
that,  as  a  nation,  they  had  something  to  live  for,  while  the 
English  had  sti*uek  him  as  lacking  an  adequate  goal  for 
effort.  War  was  declared  and  he  had  to  hurry  across 
the  frontier.  In  Cologne  station  he  notes  the  various 
attitudes  of  the  nationalities  :  Americans  in  a  bustle  for 
themselves  ;  Germans  in  a  bustle  too,  but  for  the  Father- 
land ;  "  dark  uprooted  Italians  peering  from  a  squeaking 
truck — like  Cassandra  from  the  backmost  car  looking 
steadily  down  on  Agamemnon."  He  was  gazetted  2nd 
Lieutenant  before  August  was  out,  and  by  December  he 
writes  : 

LOST 

Across  my  past  imaginings 

Has  dropped  a  blindness  silent  and  slow. 

My  eye  is  bent  on  other  things 

Than  those  it  once  did  see  and  know. 

I  may  not  think  on  those  dear  lands 
(O  far  away  and  long  ago !) 
Where  the  old  battered  signpost  stands 
And  silently  the  four  roads  go 

East,  west,  south  and  north, 
And  the  cold  winter  winds  do  blow. 
And  what  the  evening  will  bring  forth 
Is  not  for  me  nor  you  to  know. 

60 


SORLEY 

Yet  outwardly  he  was  not  at  all  "  lost  "  in  camp  life, 
but  held  his  own,  was  popular  and  successful,  and  did  not 
know  what  ill  health  was.  Promoted  to  a  lieutenancy  in 
November,  1914,  he  crossed  to  France  in  the  following 
May,  and  was  gazetted  Captain  in  August,  1915,  being 
killed  near  Hulloch  on  October  the  13th  that  same  year. 

Once  he  wrote  home  wondering  what  kind  of  life  he 
would  take  up  after  the  war  : 

"  Sorley  is  Gaelic  for  Wanderer.  I  have  had  a  con- 
ventional education  ;  Oxford  would  have  corked  it.  But 
this  (the  war)  has  freed  the  spirit,  glory  be  !  " 

Many,  many  must  have  felt  freed  from  the  tyranny  of 
England  by  the  mere  fact  of  fighting  for  her  against  the 
tyranny  of  Germany.  The  tyranny  of  peace  in  half-baked 
countries  like  those  we  know,  though  less  apparent  than 
the  tyranny  of  war,  was  perhaps  more  deadly  to  spiritual 
freedom  ;  no  Government  yet  established  has  deserved  im- 
munity from  attack  either  from  without  or  from  within  ; 
that  their  constitutions  should  change  smoothly  and,  if  it 
may  be,  swiftly  is  the  one  possible  hope  for  them  all. 

Much  later  Sorley  writes  : 

"  I  am  now  beginning  to  think  that  free-thinkers  should 
give  their  minds  into  subjection  ;  for  we,  who  have  given 
our  actions  and  volitions  into  subjection,  gain  such 
marvellous  rest  thereby.  Only  of  course  it  is  the  sub- 
jecting of  their  powers  of  will  and  deed  to  a  wrong  master, 
on  the  part  of  a  great  nation,  that  has  led  Europe  into 
war.  Perhaps  afterwards  I  and  my  likes  will  again 
become  indiscriminate  rebels.  For  the  present,  we  find 
high  relief  in  making  ourselves  soldiers." 

No  subjection  can  be  wholesome  and  no  master  right 
for  long.  We  must  be  freed  in  order  to  subject  ourselves 
to  better  rules.  No  adequate  rule  has  yet  been  conceived, 
even  by  the  finest  conscience.  From  prison  to  prison,  or 
rather  from  enlargement  to  enlargement,  men  must 
advance  or  stagnate  and  die. 

61 


SOISIE  SOT.DTER  POETS 

There  was  no  black  and  white  brutally  juxtaposed  in 
his  vision  of  the  European  War  ;  he  was  sliockcd  to  find 
so  many,  like  Vernede,  imbued  with  this  ehildishly  simple 
sense  of  utter  contrast  between  the  Allies  and  the  Germans, 
and  he  seeks  refuge  with  one  correspondent,  to  whom  he 
can  safely  put  in  a  plea  for  a  more  rational  view  of  the 
enemy. 

"So  it  seems  to  me  that  Germany's  only  fault— is  a 
lack  of  real  insight  and  sympathy  with  those  who  differ 
from  her.  We  are  not  fighting  a  bully,  but  a  bigot.  They 
are  a  young  nation,  and  don't  see  that  what  they  consider 
is  being  done  for  the  good  of  the  world  may  be  really 
being  done  for  self-gratification — like  X,  who,  under 
pretence  of  informing  the  form,  dropped  into  the  habit 
of  parading  his  own  knowledge.  X  incidentally  did  the 
form  a  service  by  creating  great  amusement  for  it ;  and 
so  is  Germany  incidentally  doing  the  world  a  service 
(though  not  in  the  way  it  meant)  by  giving  them  some- 
thing to  live  and  die  for,  which  no  country  but  Germany 
had  before.  If  the  bigot  conquers,  he  will  learn  in  time 
his  mistaken  methods  (for  it  is  only  of  the  methods  and 
not  of  the  goal  of  Germany  that  one  can  disapprove) — 
just  as  the  early  Christian  bigots  conquered  by  bigotry 
and  grew  larger  in  sympathy  and  tolerance,  after  conquest 
I  regard  the  war  as  one  between  sisters,  between  Martha 
and  Mary,  the  efficient  and  intolerant  against  the  casual 
and  sympathetic.  Each  side  has  a  virtue  for  which  it 
is  fighting,  and  each  that  virtue's  supplementary  vice. 
I  hope  that  whatever  the  material  result  of  the  conflict, 
it  will  purge  these  two  virtues  of  their  vices,  and  efficiency 
and  tolerance  will  no  longer  be  incompatible.  But  I 
think  that  tolerance  is  the  larger  virtue  of  the  two,  and 
efficiency  must  be  her  servant.  So  I  am  quite  glad  to 
fight  against  this  rebellious  servant.  In  fact  I  look  at 
it  this  way.  Suppose  my  platoon  were  the  world.  Then 
my  platoon   sergeant  would   represent   efficiency  and   I 

62 


SORLEY 

would  represent  tolerance.  .  And  I  always  take  the 
sternest  measures  to  keep  my  platoon  sergeant  in  check  ! 
I  fully  appreciate  the  ■s\asdom  of  the  War  Office  when  they 
put  inefficient  officers  to  rule  sergeants.  .  .  .  But  I've 
seen  the  Fatherland  (I  like  to  call  it  the  Fatherland,  for 
in  many  families  papa  represents  efficiency  and  mama 
tolerance — but  don't  think  I'm  W.S.P.U.)  so  horribly 
misrepresented  that  I've  been  burning  to  put  in  my  case 
for  them  to  a  sympathetic  ear." 

And  he  strikes  the  same  note,  in  some  ways  more 
profoundly,  in  verse  : 

TO  GERMANY 

You  are  blind  like  us.     Your  hurt  no  man  designed, 

And  no  man  claimed  the  conquest  of  your  land. 

But  gropers  both,  through  fields  of  thought  confined, 

We  stumble  and  we  do  not  understand. 

You  only  saw  your  future  bigly  planned, 

And  we  the  tapering  paths  of  our  own  mind. 

And  in  each  other's  dearest  ways  we  stand, 

And  hiss  and  hate.     And  the  blmd  fight  the  blind. 

When  it  is  peace,  then  we  may  view  again 

With  new-won  eyes  each  other's  truer  form 

And  wonder.     Grown  more  loving- kind  and  warm 

We'll  grasp  firm  hands  and  laugh  at  the  old  pain, 

When  it  is  peace.     But  until  peace,  the  storm 

The  darkness  and  the  thunder  and  the  rain. 

This,  like  the  other  poems  I  have  quoted,  has  a  fine 
movement ;  and  though  at  the  outset  the  phrasing  is  not 
felicitous,  it  improves  till  it  becomes  worthj'  of  the  mean- 
ing in  the  last  three  lines.  Then,  too,  what  wise,  kindly 
eyes  this  young  fellow  sees  with  ;  how  many  of  us  can  be 
put  to  shame  by  such  a  gentle  sanity  !  His  discoveries 
about  his  ovn\  countrvanen  are  no  less  persuasively 
illuminating. 

"  One  has  fairly  good  chances  of  observing  the  life  of 

63 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

the  barrack-room,  and  what  a  contrast  to  the  life  of  a 
house  in  a  public  school  !  The  system  is  roughly  the 
same ;  the  house-master  or  platoon  commander  entrusts 
the  discipline  of  his  charge  to  prefects  or  corporals,  as  the 
case  may  })e.  They  never  open  their  mouths  in  the 
barrack-room  without  the  introduction  of  the  unprintable 
swear-words  and  epithets  ;  they  have  absolutely  no 
'  morality  '  (in  the  narrower,  generally  accepted  sense) ; 
yet  the  Public  School  boy  should  live  among  them  to  learn 
a  little  Christianity  ;  for  they  are  so  extraordinarily  nice 
to  one  another.  They  live  in  and  for  the  present :  we  in 
and  for  the  future.  So  they  are  cheerful  and  charitable 
always  :  and  we  often  niggardly  and  unkind  and  spiteful. 
In  the  gymnasium  at  Marlborough,  how  the  few  clumsy 
specimens  are  ragged  and  despised  and  jeered  at  by  the 
rest  of  the  squad  ;  in  the  gymnasium  here  you  should 
hear  the  sounding  cheer  given  to  a  man  who  has  tried  for 
eight  weeks  to  make  a  long  jump  of  eight  feet,  and  at  last, 
by  the  advice  and  assistance  of  others,  has  succeeded. 
They  seem  instinctively  to  regard  a  man  singly,  at  his  own 
rate,  by  his  o^mi  standards  and  possibilities,  not  in  com- 
parison with  themselves  or  others  ;  that  is  why  they  are 
so  far  ahead  of  us  in  their  treatment  and  sizing  up  of 
others." 

Because  they  need  servants,  and  because  fine  houses 
and  rapid  locomotion  imply  labour,  the  well-to-do  tend  to 
regard  other  kinds  of  people  as  existing  for  their  con- 
venience. In  this  notion  they  resemble  the  enemy,  who 
thought  other  nations  were  there  that  Germany  might  be 
"  uber  alles." 

Sorley  was  very  sensitive  to  the  falseness  and  unfairness 
of  this  seductive  outlook,  and  perceived  how  detrimental 
it  is  to  the  finer  powers  of  those  who  indulge  in  it.  He 
felt  that  even  poets  were  too  content  to  think  of  others 
as  mere  readers  and  admirers,  and  addresses  to  them  a 
protest  on  behalf  of  less  articulate  souls  : 

64 


SORLEY 


TO  POETS 


We  are  the  homeless,  even  as  you, 

Who  hope  and  never  can  begin. 

Our  hearts  are  wounded  through  and  through 

Like  yours,  but  our  hearts  bleed  within. 

We  too  make  music,  but  our  tones 

'Scape  not  the  barrier  of  our  bones. 

We  have  no  comeliness  like  you. 
We  toil,  unlovely,  and  we  spin, 
We  start,  return  :  we  wind,  undo  : 
We  hope,  we  err,  we  strive,  we  sin. 
We  love  :  your  love's  not  greater,  but 
The  lips  of  our  love's  might  stay  shut. 
We  have  the  evil  spirits  too 
That  shake  our  soul  with  battle-din. 
But  we  have  an  eviller  spirit  than  you, 
We  have  a  dumb  spirit  within  : 
The  exceeding  bitter  agony 
But  not  the  exceeding  bitter  cry. 

Here  are  shapeliness  and  vigour  once  more  and,  though 
finish  and  colour  are  to  seek,  there  is  still  a  marked  im- 
provement as  the  end  comes  in  view. 

Like  other  soldier  poets,  Sorley  is  anxious  to  think  well 
of  Death,  whom  he  addresses  : 

I. 

Saints  have  adored  the  lofty  soul  of  you. 
Poets  have  whitened  at  your  high  renown. 
We  stand  among  the  many  millions  who 
Do  hourly  wait  to  pass  your  pathway  down. 
You,  so  familiar,  once  were  strange  :  we  tried 
To  live  as  of  your  presence  unaware. 
But  now  in  every  road,  on  every  side, 
We  see  your  straight  and  steadfast  signpost  here. 
I  think  it  like  that  signpost  in  my  land. 
Hoary  and  tall,  which  pointed  me  to  go 

E  65 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

Upward,  into  the  Hills,  on  the  right  hand, 

Where  the  mists  swim  and  the  winds  shriek  and  blow, 

A  homeless  land  and  I'riendless.  but  a  land 

I  did  not  know  and  that  I  wished  to  know. 

II. 

Such,  sueh  is  Death  :   no  triumph  :   no  defeat : 
Only  an  empty  pail,  a  slate  rubbed  clean, 
A  merciful  putting  aw'ay  of  what  has  been. 

And  this  we  know  :   Death  is  not  Life  effete. 

Life  crushed,  the  broken  pail.     We  who  have  seen 

So  marvellous  things  know  well  the  end  not  yet. 

Victor  and  vanquished  are  a-onc  in  death  : 

Coward  and  brave  :   friend,  foe.     Ghosts  do  not  say 

"  Come,  what  was  vour  record  when  vou  drew  vour 

breath?" 
But  a  big  blot  has  hid  each  yesterday 
So  poor,  so  manifestly  incomplete. 
And  your  bright  Promise  withered  long  and  sped, 
Is  touched,  stirs,  rises,  opens  and  grows  sweet 
And  blossoms  and  is  you,  when  you  are  dead. 

These  sonnets  cannot  compare  for  beauty  and  adequacy 
with  Brooke's  best,  but  the  thought  in  them  is  perhaps 
even  less  expected,  if  not  so  certainly  true.  For  us  at 
least  his  promise  is  Sorley,  now  that  he  is  dead.  Death 
tempts  us,  nay  forces  us  to  overrate  his  actual  production, 
and  Reason  in  vain  points  out  that  the  strait  limits  of  his 
sensuous  joys  in  image  and  language  suggest  that  his 
poetical  vein  might  have  soon  run  dry.  Yet  not  before 
he  had  enriched  us,  like  another  Matthew^  Arnold,  with 
some  equivalent  for  Empedocles,  Sohrab  and  Ruslum 
and  The  Scholar  Gipsy,  we  retort.  The  power  which 
shapes  a  masteipiece  includes  that  which  matures  the  man 
of  the  world,  and  that  which  renders  the  critic  accom- 
plished. Youth  binds  these  and  the  other  tacts  and 
aptitudes  in  a  solid  faggot,  but   after  a  time  there  is 

66 


SORLEY 

possibly  more  gain  than  loss,  should  life  cut  the  cord  and 
use  the  sticks  singly.  Then,  perhaps,  engrossed  by 
political  reform,  the  poet's  soul  may  be  felt  as  an  agent 
and  no  longer  by  its  cohesion  provoke  the  echo,  beauty 
from  stony  world.  Death  has  settled  that,  and  for  many 
minds,  when  Wordsworth's  hare  is  watched,  racing  on  the 
moors  while  that  mist  raised  by  her  feet  from  the  wet  turf 
iTjns  with  her,  a  boy  will  soon  appear  accompanied  with  a 
sweeping  veil  of  rain  coursing  the  same  uplands.  And 
when  the  elder  poet  has  listened  to  the  old  leech-gatherer 
standing  in  the  pool,  he  will  turn  to  welcome  wisdom  from 
young  rain-brightened  lips  as  Sorley  draws  to  a  halt  at 
his  side,  to  wonder  over  prehistoric  men  or  speak  gener- 
ously of  those  of  to-day  and  to  morrow.  His  is  but  a 
continuation  of  Wordsworth's  theme  ;  for  as  the  dignity 
of  individuals  depends  on  their  resolute  independence,  so 
that  dignity  alone  rendei-s  a  social  amalgam  feasible.  A 
nation  is  not  fused  by  these  sacrificing  and  exploiting 
those,  but  by  all  devoting  and  employing  themselves, 
and  no  man  has  a  chance  of  doing  this  till  he  is  a  free 
agent.  Nations,  too,  can  only  build  a  civilised  world  by 
respecting  each  other's  independence,  and  the  do^^iifall 
of  Germany  shows  how  little  efficiency  can  atone  for 
the  wish  to  domineer.  Efficiency  is  fine,  but  kindness  is 
beautiful,  and  beauty  is  as  strong  as  light,  far  stronger 
than  any  palpable  thing  ;  and  in  the  long  run  it  will 
prove  to  be  the  only  rightful  ruler.  All  other  principles 
need  to  resort  to  force,  but  for  beauty  vision  will  win 
allegiance,  so  soon  as  the  smoke  of  strife  and  commerce  is 
out  of  men's  eyes. 


67 


FRANCIS   LEDWIDGE 

Francis  Ledwidge/  as  a  poet,  is  the  complement  of 
Sorley  ;  each  brings  us  what  the  other  lacks.  Ledwidge 
has  no  constructive  power,  and  the  impetus  of  his 
cadences  rarely  carries  him  satisfactorily  through  even  a 
short  poem,  whereas  Sorley's  rode  on  unchecked  by  weak 
lines  and  poor  phrasing.  Our  new  poet's  language  is,  on 
the  other  hand,  often  over-poetical,  and  his  images  some- 
times fantastically  dazzling — an  excess  of  the  quality 
which  critics  perceive  most  easily  and  Avelcome  most 
widely  !  And  a  vivid  coloured  flash  on  its  surface  is  an 
important  element  in  great  verse.  Lord  Dunsany,  who 
introduces  Ledwidge  to  the  public,  tells  us  that  he  was 
born  a  peasant  in  Meath  and  tried  once  to  assist  a  Dublin 
grocer.  But  cities  cannot  cage  these  wild  souls,  home 
memories  inveigle,  the  country  lures, 

"  And  wondrous  impudently  sweet, 
Half  of  him  passion,  half  conceit. 
The  blackbird  calls  adown  the  street 
Like  the  piper  of  Hamelin." 

And  the  lad  of  sixteen  who  had  written  this  "  walked 
home  one  night  a  distance  of  thirty  miles." 

Since  the  war  he  had  become  a  coi"poral  in  the  regiment 
in  which  Lord  Dunsany  was  a  captain,  and  had  travelled 
to  Greece  and  Eg}^pt.  This  preface  likens  him  to  John 
Clare,  our  English  pauper  poet,  of  one  hundred  years  ago, 
whose  life  among  a  nation  of  shopkeepers  is  the  saddest 
idyll ;  and  even  to-day  I  fancy  that  Ledwidge  might 
have  been  congratulated  on  his  birth  the  other  side  of  St 
George's  Channel,  among  people  more  patient  with  and 
more  appreciative  of  poets.     John  Clare's  poems  were  a 

^  Songs  of  the  Fields.  By  Francis  Ledwidge.  Herbert  Jenkins. 
1915.  Songs  of  Peace.  By  Francis  Ledwidge.  Herbert  Jenkins. 
1017.  Quotations  by  permission  of  Herbert  Jenkins,  Esq.,  and  Lord 
Dunsany. 

69 


SOME  SOT.DIER   POKTS 

series  of  delights  over  detail,  grouped  more  or  less  as  in 
nature  l)y  loeality  and  season,  yet  rareh',  if  ever,  shaped 
into  a  poetic  whole.  Ledwidge's  verse  stores  details  too, 
but  they  are  less  varied  and  less  realistic,  though  Ixtter 
transnuited  by  his  moods,  for  he  is  moved  even  more  by 
the  image  that  caps  the  perception  than  by  the  thing 
perceived.  As  a  poet,  at  least,  he  too  lived  in  a  dream 
not  yet  articulated  by  reason  and  purjjose.  And  one  is 
tempted,  though  one  lias  no  right,  to  suppose  that  his  life 
also  may  have  had  something  of  the  ineffectual  simplicity 
of  John  Clare's.  His  rhymes  are  related  to  those  of  ]Mr 
Yeats  and  the  minor  Irish  poets  of  to-day,  as  Clare's  were 
to  Keats',  Wordsworth's  and  Cowper's,  and  I  think  this 
is  all  that  can  be  really  meant  when  he  has  been  praised 
for  style.  Irish  work  may  often  seem  to  have  more  style 
than  English,  even  when  it  is  far  weaker  in  the  funda- 
mental qualities  of  great  literature.  Dominant  moods 
give  it  a  singleness  and  independence  of  outlook  which 
condones  the  absence  of  complexity  in  emotion  and  of 
balance  in  intellectual  grasp. 

THE  SISTER 

I  SAW  the  little  quiet  town, 
And  the  whitewashed  gables  on  the  hill. 
And  laughing  children  coming  down 
The  lane  way  to  the  mill. 

Wind-blushes  up  their  faces  glowed, 
And  they  were  happy  as  could  be. 
The  wobbling  water  never  flowed 
So  merry  and  so  free. 

One  little  maid  withdrew  aside 
To  pick  a  pebble  from  the  sands. 
Her  golden  hair  was  long  and  wide, 
And  there  were  dimples  on  her  hands. 

70 


FRANCIS  LEDWIDGE 

And  when  I  saw  her  large  blue  eyes, 
What  was  the  pain  that  went  through  me  ? 
Why  did  I  think  on  Southern  skies 
And  ships  upon  the  sea  ? 

I  think  this  is  as  near  as  Ledwidge  ever  comes  to 
organic  perfection,  though  two  freaks  of  phrasing  fleck  its 
very  real  beauty  and  success. 

"  And  Gwydion  said  to  Math,  when  it  was  Spring  : 
'  Come  now  and  let  us  make  a  wife  for  Llew. ' 
And  so  they  broke  broad  boughs  yet  moist  with  dew 
And  in  a  shadow  made  a  perfect  ring  : 
They  took  the  violet  and  the  meadow-sweet 
To  form  her  pretty  face,  and  for  her  feet 
They  built  a  mound  of  daisies  on  a  wing. 
And  for  her  voice  they  made  a  linnet  sing 
In  the  wide  poppy  blowing  for  her  mouth. 
And  over  all  they  chanted  twenty  hours. 
And  Llew  came  singing  from  the  azure  south 
And  bore  away  his  wife  of  birds  and  flowers." 

If  the  success  of  this  is  smoother,  there  is  to  my  mind  a 
suspicion  of  the  happy  moment  of  a  professor  of  poetry  in 
its  well-worn  theme  and  the  refurbished  stock  images  of 
the  Celtic  Muse.  The  Death  of  Aillil,  the  most  successful 
of  his  attempts  at  narrative,  fails  for  me  in  the  same  way. 
Songs  of  the  Fields,  his  first  volume,  rewards  the  reader  far 
better  than  Songs  of  Peace,  in  good  part  written  since  the 
war  began.     Yet  his  soldiering  in  Greece  gives  us  this  : 

THE  HOME-COMING  OF  THE  SHEEP 

The  sheep  are  coming  home  in  Greece, 
Hark  the  bells  on  every  hill ! 
Flock  by  flock,  and  fleece  by  fleece. 
Wandering  wide  a  little  piece 
Thro'  the  evening  red  and  still, 
Stopping  where  the  pathways  cease. 
Cropping  with  a  hurried  will. 

71 


SOME  SOT.DTER   POETS 

Tliro'  tlic  cotton  Irishes  low 
]\Iorrv  l>oys  with  sliouklcrcd  crooks 
Close  them  in  a  single  row, 
Shout  among  thcni  as  they  go 
With  one  bell-ring  o'er  the  brooks. 
Such  delight  you  never  know 
Reading  it  from  gilded  books.  .  .  . 

The  fourth  line  is  quite  as  inadequate  as  some  of  Sorley's 
most  careless,  but  the  poem  is  exquisite  ;  only  in  the  book 
the  picture  and  mood  are  weakened  by  an  additional 
stanza. 

His  movements  are  more  sustainedly  happy  in  less 
original  work,  which  is  an  indication  that  he  had  it  in  him 
to  suipass  what  now  remains  his  best. 

"  I  often  look  when  the  moon  is  low 
Thro'  that  other  window  on  the  wall. 
At  a  land  all  beautiful  under  snow. 
Blotted  with  shadows  that  come  and  go 
When  the  winds  rise  up  and  fall. 
And  the  form  of  a  beautiful  maid 
In  the  white  silence  stands 
And  beckons  me  with  her  hands.  .  .  ." 

The  trouble  produced  by  a  soldier's  life  in  such  a  mind 
accounts  for  the  comparative  poverty  of  the  second  book, 
rather  than  any  failure  of  impulse  or  resource.  Neither 
book  is  so  much  a  collection  of  poems  as  a  store-house  of 
lines,  phrases  and  images,  with  here  a  cadence  caught  and 
lost,  there  a  striking  thought — choice  things,  but  rarely 
mounted  to  advantage,  rather,  to  use  his  own  words,  like 

"  .  .  .  an  apron  full  of  jewels 
The  dewy  cobweb  swings." 

Here  are  others  :  and  you  might  have  as  many  again, 
were  there  space  to  quote  them  : 

"  The  large  moon  rose  up  queenly  as  a  flower 
Charmed  by  some  Indian  pipes." 

72 


FRANCIS  LEDWTDGE 

"  And  all  we  learn  but  shows  we  know  the  less." 

"  When  the  wind  passing  took  your  scattered  hair 
And  flung  it  like  a  brown  shower  in  my  face." 

"  Within  the  oak  a  throb  of  pigeon  wings." 

"  And  the  blue 
Of  hiding  violets,  watching  for  your  face, 
Listen  for  you  in  every  dusky  place." 

"  The  moon  had  won 
Her  way  above  the  woods,  with  her  small  star 
Behind  her  like  the  cuckoo's  little  mother.  ..." 

"  Tlie  bees  are  holding  levees  in  the  flowers." 

"  Day  hangs  its  light  between  two  dusks,  my  heart, 
Always  beyond  the  dark  there  is  the  blue. 
Some  time  we'll  leave  the  dark,  myself  and  you, 
And  revel  in  the  light  for  evermore. 

But  in  the  dark  your  beauty  shall  be  strong. 

Pigeons  are  home.    Day  droops — the  fields  are  cold. 
Now  a  slow  wind  comes  labouring  up  the  sky 
With  a  small  cloud  long  steeped  in  sunset  gold, 
Like  Jason  with  the  precious  fleece  anigh 
The  harbour  of  lolcos.     Day's  bright  eye 
Is  filmed  with  the  tAvilight,  and  the  rill 
Shines  like  a  scimitar  upon  the  liill." 

These  things  are  strimg  together  with  little  apparent 
connection  except  the  rhymes,  each  poem's  structure 
being  the  pattern  that  these  make.  However,  you  could 
glean  felicities  in  such  quantities  from  no  other  of  these 
Soldier  Poets,  not  even  from  Brooke  ;  and  note  that  this  I 
underlines  Brooke's  superiority ;  his  reflective  and 
organic  power  makes  more  of  fewer  treasures.     The  best 

73 


so:me  soldier  poets 

effect  of  rcndint;-  T>((lwid<rc'  is  tlmt  wliicli  lie  (leseril>es  in  a 
poem  (Icdieatcd  to  INI.  McCi.  ("  Who  came  one  day  when 
we  were  all  gloomy  and  cheered  us  with  sad  music  "). 

"  Old  memories  knocking  at  each  heart 
Troubled  us  with  the  world's  great  lie  : 
You  sat  a  little  way  apart 
And  made  a  fiddle  cry. 

And  rivers  full  of  little  lights 

Came  down  the  fields  of  waving  green  : 

Our  immemorial  delights 

Stole  in  on  us  unseen." 

The  delight  with  which  a  cliild  first  perceives  Ijeauty, 
though  it  be  forgotten,  must  never  be  barred  and  shuttered 
from  return  into  the  mind  by  coarsening  habit  or  hum- 
bling care.  If  this  happens,  the  enchantment  of  poetrj- 
is  powerless.  And  as  Antaeus'  strength  was  increased 
whenever  his  feet  touched  the  earth,  aesthetic  power 
revives  when  these  primordial  joys  return  into  the  lofty 
buildings  of  a  master  mind  ;  and  should  these  smiling 
visitors  desert  it  finally,  however  noble  the  building,  its 
charm  grows  cold  ;  so  important  is  this  love  of  particular 
things  and  particular  aspect  of  things  to  the  mind.  This 
tenderness  over  detail  means  more  to  poetry  and  painting 
than  the  theorist  easily  allows.  Though  perceived  as  a 
flash  on  the  surface,  this  is  a  pulse  of  health  that,  having 
made  youth  perfect,  can  recreate  maturity  and  old  age. 
Everj'thing  that  exists  is  holy,  or  at  least  demonic,  when 
seen  as  a  new  and  solitary  portent ;  thus  it  appears  first 
to  the  child,  and  must  reappear  to  inspire  the  artist. 

In  these  small  books,  those  whom  the  w^ar  has  hurried 
too  much  and  too  long,  and  those  whom  it  has  deafened 
and  sickened  with  evil  sounds  and  evil  sights,  may  find  a 
well  of  refreshment  suitable  to  a  convalescent  mood  that 
has  not  the  energy  to  appreciate  more  elegant,  noble  or 
74 


FRANCIS  LEDWIDGE 

massive  creations.  Had  he  lived  Ledwidge  might  very 
well  have  shown  more  constnictive  power  than  I  seem  to 
allow.  He  was  still  quite  young  when  he  was  killed  in 
Flanders  ;  and  those  finer  things  that  his  genius  would 
have  created  when  it  was  fully  organised  were  lost 
for  ever.  The  choice  and  subtle  images  which  cro^^^l  his 
perceptions  so  frequently  are  in  themselves  structures, 
just  as  the  cells  of  the  body  are  living  organisms.  As  we 
have  seen,  Sorley  stands  quite  alone  in  power  to  shape  an 
inevitable  whole  at  so  early  an  age.  The  vision  that  rises 
for  me  as  I  read  these  Songs  of  the  Fields  is  more  like  John 
Clare  than  it  would  be  were  my  mind  more  capable  of 
detecting  the  intimate  difference  of  tissue  in  the  liveliest 
productions  of  the  two  men.  Still,  though  in  him  it  were 
but  a  phase  to  outgrow,  this  temperament  embodies 
before  my  eyes,  as  an  inveterate  way  of  life  in  which  most 
poets  have  some  share.  Though  the  body  it  informs  grow 
old,  this  does  not  age  :  young-eyed,  it  has  wandered 
every  land  where  an  oral  literature  was  cherished,  a  wel- 
come figure  with  the  pathetic  refinement  of  one  who  has 
mused  much  and  yet  lives  destitute  of  creature  comforts. 
His  clothes  have  been  new  in  regions  far  apart,  though 
wear  and  weather  have  made  them  merely  his,  well-nigh 
obliterating  fashions  and  colour.  Watch,  he  stops  on 
the  hill  road  before  a  little  fomitain's  trough  which  some 
herd-boy  has  banked  round  with  turfs  and  stones,  that  a 
few  sheep  or  a  cow  may  drink  the  better  !  He  discerns  in 
it  more  success  than  his  own  activity  has  compassed — an 
image  of  hopes  he  once  owTied.  He  kneels  and,  gazing 
into  the  limpid  basin,  sees  not,  like  Narcissus,  his  o^vn 
features,  but  most  dear  memories,  moonrises  and  sunsets, 
wind-bent  boughs,  the  calls  of  many  birds,  nodding 
flowers,  children  running,  laughing  and  kissing — he  sees 
and  hears  as  he  first  saw  and  heard.  From  many  poems 
the  delight  of  other  men's  visions  changes  and  inter- 
changes with  these  until  he  clears  a  mist  from  liis  eyes,  for 

75 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

always  iK'foro  long  ho  expects  "a  fnvc  \\\\]  of  smiles,"  a 
young  woman's,  always  the  same,  though  now  the  eyes 
are  blue,  now  grey,  now  brown,  though  the  hair  curls  or  is 
smooth,  though  name  after  name  seems  to  fit  it,  though 
blue  jewels  made  from  feathers  crown  it  or  coral  from 
the  sea,  helmeted  now  in  fur  and  now  in  mail,  or  white- 
capped  like  "  a  fairy  hooded  in  one  bell  of  the  valley-lilv," 
or,  uncovered,  with  tresses  that  play  with  the  wind.  The 
eyes  are  always  innocent,  always  welcoming,  but  so  vari- 
ous that,  despite  a  constant  homeliness,  it  is  a  goddess's 
face — her  laugh  is  heard  wherever  this  or  that  in  the 
world  has  pleased  eye  or  ear  of  this  wanderer,  whose  heart 
has  remained  young  and  fresh  as  that  of  a  boy.  And  he, 
he  forgets  his  life,  forgets  the  stones  and  glinting  mica  silt 
that  floor  that  limpid  trough,  forgets  the  grass  of  Par- 
nassus that  he  has  set  floating  on  it,  and  is  where  she  is, 
while  contentment  fills  him  and  that  lonely  place. 


76 


EDWARD   THOMAS 

Edward  Thomas  had  wandered  over  literature  and 
England,  and  shaped  a  mind  that,  at  first  opinionated, 
had  saddened  and  mellowed.  In  the  end  he  became  a 
poet  and  a  soldier  almost  at  the  same  time,  and  now  is 
dead.  His  success  in  prose  had  always  been  middling, 
breeding  further  discontent ;  do  his  poems  ^  greatly 
succeed  ?  Every  time  I  read  them  I  like  them  better. 
Loh,  his  longest  effort,  was  the  first  I  saw ;  it  was 
perfectly  dissociated  from  him  by  the  assumed  name  of 
"  Eastaway  "  and  appeared  to  me  full  of  promise  though 
unwieldy  ;  but  in  this  collected  volume  his  quality  does 
not  strike  me  as  like  a  young  man's,  but  wily,  artful  and 
aware  of  many  traps. 

"  Rise  up,  rise  up, 
And,  as  the  triunpet  blowing 
Chases  the  dreams  of  men. 
As  the  dawn  glowing 
The  stars  that  left  unlit 
The  land  and  water, 
Rise  up  and  scatter 
The  dew  that  covers 
The  print  of  last  night's  lovers  — 
Scatter  it,  scatter  it ! 

While  you  are  listening 

To  the  clear  horn, 

Forget,  men,  everything 

On  this  earth  newborn. 

Except  that  it  is  lovelier 

Than  any  mysteries. 

Open  your  eyes  to  the  air 

That  has  washed  the  eyes  of  the  stars 

Thi'ough  all  the  dewy  night : 

Up  with  the  hght. 

To  the  old  wars  ; 

Arise,  arise ! " 

1  Poems  by  Edward  Thomas.     Selwyn  &    Blount.     3s.    6d.     Quota- 
tions by  permission  of  Mrs  Edward  Thomas. 

77 


SOMK  SOLDIER  POETS 

Tlu)up[li  the  inipulso  to  write  tliat  was  strong,  it  has 
constantly  obeyed  the  bridle  of  keen  literary  taste,  its 
grace  is  not  like  that  of  wild  life,  but  like  that  of  horse- 
manship, and  will  ])e  the  more  admired  the  more  fidly  the 
difliculties  overcome  arc  appreciated.  In  some  of  these 
poems  novelty  is  sought  as  though  felicity  were  despaired 
of,  yet  a  few  are  really  ha})py.  Keats  believed  that 
felicities  should  so  chime  in  with  the  human  soul  as  to 
seem  known  before,  even  though  a  prenatal  existence 
had  to  be  supposed  to  justify  that  impression.  Novelties 
in  poetry  fail  if  merely  new.  Mr  Yeats  has  of  late  years 
set  the  fashion  of  skating  across  ever  thinner  ice  until  it 
seems  almost  miraculous  that  verse  is  not  prose.  You 
watch  the  skater  as  the  surface  warps  under  his  swift 
passage,  and  expect  that  in  another  minute  he  will  be  in 
it,  floundering  like  any  Walt  Whitman,  but  this  does  not 
happen.  Rhyme  is  not  discarded,  but  strained  ;  rhj'thms 
are  not  free,  but  licentious.  Thomas  shows  this  tendency 
in  ways  of  his  own,  neither  very  determined  nor  very 
risky,  yet  sometimes  annoying.  These  sleights  of  his 
are  intended,  like  those  of  others,  deftly  to  dazzle  the 
most  sophisticated  judges,  and  in  so  far  betray  a  greater 
preoccupation  with  manner  than  with  matter — a  fault  of 
proportion.  The  creative  mind  considers  the  manner 
solely  as  the  servant  of  the  import  and  justness  of  its 
theme.  Thomas  knew  life  after  a  fashion  that  was  not 
the  fashion  he  had  intended  to  discover  it  in.  The 
passionate  young  man  liaAvks  for  experience  with  his 
fancy,  but  the  quarry  brought  to  his  feet  is  not  always 
that  at  which  he  let  his  falcon  fly. 

"  'He  has  robbed  two  clubs.     The  judge  at  Salisbury 
Can't  give  him  more  than  he  undoubtedly 
Deserves.     The  scomidrel !     Look  at  his  photograph  ! 
A  lady-killer  !     Hanging's  too  good  by  half 
For  such  as  he.'     So  said  the  stranger,  one 
With  crimes  yet  undiscovered  or  undone, 

78 


EDWARD  THOIMAS 

But  at  the  inn  the  Gipsy  dame  began  : 

'  Now  he  was  what  I  call  a  gentleman. 

He  went  along  with  Carrie,  and  when  she 

Had  a  baby  he  paid  up  so  readily 

His  half-a-crown.     Just  like  him.     A  crown'd  have  been 

More  like  him.     For  I  never  knew  him  mean. 

Oh  !  but  he  was  such  a  nice  gentleman.     Oh  ! 

Last  time  we  met  he  said  if  me  and  Joe 

Was  anywhere  near  we  must  be  sure  to  call. 

He  put  his  arms  around  our  Amos  all 

As  if  he  were  his  own  son.     I  pray  God 

Save  him  from  justice  !     Nicer  man  never  trod.'  " 

This  is  the  spirit  of  Borrow  rather  than  that  of 
Wordsworth.  Yet  I  divine  a  hankering  for  spiritual 
intensity  akin  to  that  of  the  more  central  master. 
These  poems  drift  across  a  profound  hunger  for  ideal 
human  relations  ;  like  those  floating  gardens  of  Kashmir, 
they  traverse  an  inconmiunicable  want,  as  one  of  them 
says — 

"  content  and  discontent 
As  larks  and  swallows  are  perhaps  with  wings  " 

— an  acceptance  of  the  encountered  actuality  far  less 
cavalier  than  that  of  the  Tinman's  antagonist.  Though 
Thomas  had  waved  a  flag  like  those  who  throw  their 
energies  into  a  movement,  the  comrades  tramping  by  his 
side  and  following  were  heard  like  echoes  making  his 
foot's  thud  sound  all  the  more  lonely.  That  heraldic 
picture  of  Simple  Life  Returning  blazoned  on  the  banner 
seemed  no  truer  to  his  vision  than  those  unsubstantial 
reverberations  multiplying  the  plod-plod  of  his  two  feet ; 
till  he  felt  most  solitary  when  agreement  with  him  was 
most  general.  To  adore  remote  places  with  quaint  names 
became  a  fashion,  but  he  retreated  from  prose  to  poetry 
in  shy  alarm. 

The  country  and  simple  lives  have  their  beauty,  but 

79 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

what  is  more  obvious,  they  are  pieturcsque,  inventoried 
stage  properties  of  well-AV(^rn  appeal.  This  pieturesque- 
ness  deludes  men  after  they  have  despaired  of  more  ideal 
beauties,  sueh  as  can  only  he  recognised  in  particular 
cases  by  very  rare  souls.  For  Wordswortli,  country  folk 
were  the  matrix  out  of  which  an  ideal  life  might  yet  be 
moulded  ;  his  dearest  thoughts  and  passionate  aspirations 
rejoiced  or  suffered  on  their  account.  Deep  country 
ancientness  and  Celtic  magic  had  raised  Thomas'  en- 
thusiasm, but  his  mind  did  not  unite  with  what  it  admired, 
and  gradually  felt  undeceived,  and  this  disillusionment 
was  closer  to  reality  than  his  infatuation  had  been.  At  a 
cross-roads  he  says  : 

"  I  read  the  sign.     Which  way  shall  I  go  ? 
A  voice  says  :   '  You  would  not  have  doubted  so 
At  twenty.'     Another  voice  gentle  with  scorn 
Says :  '  At  twenty  you  wished  you  had  never  been  born.'  " 

Though  doubtless  minor  disappointments  intensified 
the  feeling,  in  a  general  sense  one  would  imagine  that  his 
birth  vexed  him  because  it  had  not  befallen  in  a  pastoral 
age,  in  Arcady,  in  Ireland  when  Cuchulain  was  about  or  in 
the  Middle  Ages  when  the  oldest  of  existing  bams  was 
building.  This  soul,  we  say  as  we  read,  must  have  chafed 
against  modern  circimistance.  Union  with  nature,  be- 
tween man  and  the  most  essential  conditions  of  his  life, 
such  as  that  supposed  to  have  been  achieved  in  far-off 
times  and  places,  has  a  true  ideal  value  ;  it  does  corre- 
spond to  a  profound  and  rational  aspiration.  Honour 
then  to  its  at  times  quaint  and  perverse  expression  !  But 
observant  eyes  see  more  than  they  look  for.  And  Thomas, 
who  took  pains  to  visit  and  know  the  most  untouched 
parts  of  England  and  Wales,  and  who  drank  to  the  dregs 
the  considerable  literature  which  can  feed  such  curiosity, 
though  he  still  loved  nature,  was  undeceived  about  man 

80 


EDWARD  THOMAS 

and,  as  a  corollary,  about  himself.  It  dawned  upon  him 
that  man's  need  is  nobler  impulses  rather  than  choicer 
circumstances,  that  the  soul  seeks  a  mood  and  should  not 
be  put  off  with  hopes  and  desires,  for  we  can  onh^  possess 
that  which  we  can  truly  appreciate. 

"  When  we  two  walked  in  Lent 
We  imagined  that  happiness 
Was  something  different 
And  this  was  something  less. 

But  happy  were  we  to  hide 
Our  happiness,  not  as  they  were 
Who  acted  in  their  pride 
Juno  and  Jupiter : 

For  the  Gods  in  their  jealousy 
Murdered  that  wife  and  man, 
And  we  that  were  wqse  live  free 
To  recall  our  happiness  then." 

Thus  many  men  and  women  look  back  at  a  full- 
illusioned  youth  with  something  of  envy,  and  yet  with  a 
sense  of  freedom  at  the  thought  that  those  headstrong 
young  people  are  really  dead,  which  allows  them  to  smile 
with  the  world,  not  in  scorn  of  it,  to  be  tender  and  kind 
instead  of  passionate  and  self-absorbed.  Freedom  from 
that  fervid  seriousness  permits  humorous  playfulness, 
permits  a  vital  possession  of  our  own  scorned  past,  and  has 
gentle  acceptance  for  the  stream  of  shortcoming  which  is 
daily  life. 

"  If  every  hour 
Like  this  one  passing  that  I  have  spent  among 
The  wiser  others  when  I  have  forgot 
To  wonder  whether  I  was  free  or  not, 
Were  piled  before  me,  and  not  lost  behind, 
And  I  could  take  and  carry  them  away 
I  should  be  rich  ;   or  if  I  had  the  power 
To  wipe  out  every  one  and  not  again 
Regret,  I  should  be  rich  to  be  so  poor 
And  yet  I  still  am  half  in  love  with  pain.  ..." 

F  81 


SOME  SOLDIER   POETS 

Wliat  a  contrast  to  Wordswortli,  who  always  looked 
back  to  his  youth  as  freshly  arrived  from  heaven,  and 
wished  to  bind  maturity  and  age  to  it  by  conscious  piety. 
He  liad  been  born  free  ;  Thomas  achieved  freedom  at  the 
cost  of  disillusionment ;  yet  it  was  part  of  his  latter-day 
riches  that  he  had  been  so  deceived  long  ago.  Better  so, 
than  to  have  been  without  fire,  than  to  have  been  dull, 
toi"])id  and  mean.  Yes,  yes  ;  but  not  better  than  to  have 
been  a  creative  artist,  thrilling  and  anguishing  about  work 
that  was  more  important  than  the  workman.  But  with 
freedom  came  the  inspired  moods  at  last,  and  prose  gave 
way  to  poetry.  This  wanderer's  vision  had  much  in 
common  wnth  Ledwidge's  vivid  aptness  of  particular 
images  and  Clare's  limpid  sight. 


"While  the  sweet  last-left  damsons  from  the  bough 
With  spangles  of  the  morning's  storm  drop  down 
Because  the  starling  shakes  it." 

"  The  swift  with  wings  and  tail  as  sharp  and  narrow 
As  if  the  bow  had  flown  off  with  the  arrow." 

"  Like  the  touch  of  rain  she  was 
On  a  man's  flesh  and  hair  and  eyes." 

"  November's  earth  is  dirty  ... 
And  the  prettiest  things  on  the  ground  are  the  paths 
With  morning  and  evening  hobnails  dinted, 
With  foot  ancl  wing-tip  overprinted 
Or  separately  charactered 
Of  little  beast  and  little  bird." 


Such  things  must  always  make  a  poet  supremely  happy 
at  whatever  stage  of  life  they  may  be  written.     And 
where  there  is  simple  joy,  playfulness  and  tenderness  will 
find  room. 
82 


EDWARD  THOMAS 

"  If  I  should  ever  by  chance  grow  rich 
I'll  buy  Codham,  Cockridden  and  Childerditch, 
Roses,  Pyrgo  and  Lapwater, 
And  let  them  all  to  my  elder  daughter. 
The  rent  I  shall  ask  of  her  will  be  only 
Each  year's  first  violets,  white  and  lonely, 
The  first  primroses  and  orchises  — 
She  must  find  them  before  I  do,  that  is. 
But  if  she  finds  a  blossom  on  furze 
Without  rent  they  shall  for  ever  be  hers, 
Codham,  Cockridden  and  Childerditch, 
Roses,  Pyrgo  and  Lapwater — 
I  shall  give  them  all  to  my  elder  daughter." 

And  to  his  wife — 

"  And  you,  Helen,  what  should  I  give  you  ? 
So  many  things  I  would  give  you 
Had  I  an  infinite  great  store 
Offered  me  and  I  stood  before 
To  choose.     I  would  give  you  youth, 
All  kinds  of  loveliness  and  truth, 
A  clear  eye  as  good  as  mine. 
Lands,  waters,  flowers,  wine. 
As  many  children  as  your  heart 
Might  wish  for,  a  far  better  art 
Than  mine  can  be,  all  you  have  lost 
Upon  the  travelling  waters  tossed. 
Or  given  to  me.     If  I  could  choose 
Freely  in  that  great  treasm'e-house 
Anything  from  any  shelf, 
I  would  give  you  back  yourself. 
And  power  to  discriminate 
What  you  want  and  want  it  not  too  late, 
Many  fair  days  free  from  care 
And  heart  to  enjoy  both  foul  and  fair, 
And  myself,  too,  if  I  could  find 
Where  it  lay  hidden  and  it  proved  kind." 

The  Muse  rarely  lays  her  hand  for  the  first  time  on  a 
man  in  his  late  thirties,  and  when  this  happens  we  ought 
not  to  be  surprised  if  he  proves  himself  a  considerable 

83 


SOIME  SOLDIER   POETS 

poet  with  complex  and  subtle  moods.  Thomas  in  this 
thin  volume  ranges  from  mere  impressionism  to  creation 
as  exquisite  as  this  : 

"  The  clouds  that  are  so  light, 
Beautiful,  s^vift  and  bright. 
Cast  shadows  on  field  and  park 
Of  the  earth  that  is  so  dark. 

And  even  so  now,  light  one  ! 
Beautiful,  swift  and  bright  one  ! 
You  let  fall  on  a  heart  that  was  dark, 
Unillumined,  a  deeper  mark. 

But  clouds  would  have,  without  earth 
To  shadow,  far  less  w^orth  : 
Away  from  your  shadow^  on  me 
Your  beauty  less  would  be, 

And  if  it  still  be  treasured 
An  age  hence,  it  shall  be  measured 
By  this  small  dark  spot 
Without  which  it  were  not." 

A  really  finished  and  lovely  poem,  which  will  improve 
with  long  pondering  and  often  repeating.  This  man  had 
fought  for  his  own  freedom  and  won  against  considerable 
odds  before  he  went  out  to  fight  for  ours.  Through  his 
art,  as  under  limpid  water,  one  sees  the  opinionated  savage 
youngster  whom  he  first  was,  lying  drowned,  exclusive  in 
his  love  of  Celtic  magic  and  deep-country  ancientness, 
despising  many  fine  things  because  he  associated  them 
with  towns  and  globe-trotters  ;  but  the  real  man's  soul 
with  its  depth  and  stillness  has  charmed  all  that  turbu- 
lence, so  that  it  now  lies  like  a  picture  of  itself  under 
glass.  Not  born  free,  but  self -freed  like  a  plant  that  hfts 
a  stone,  or  a  sapling  that  splits  a  rock  before  it  can  show 
the  world  its  proper  l^cauty,  and,  for  us  discovered,  like 
that  hooded  wayfarer  at  the  supper-table  only  recognised 

84. 


EDWARD  THOMAS 

after  he  has  vanished,  as  better  than  our  kindest  thoughts 
had  dared  suppose.  Our  house  was  not  well  ordered,  he 
should  not  have  had  to  write  hastily  for  his  own  and  his 
children's  bread,  we  have  lost  the  chance  of  using  him  to 
the  best  advantage  ;  yet  he  leaves  us  more  than  we 
deserved,  something  that  will  be  treasured  by  posterity 
for  ever.  As  his  body  fell,  its  cloak  melted  off  the  soul 
and  we  caught  a  glimpse  which  confounded  our  poor 
recollections  of  the  man,  and  words  of  his  still  tolling 
round  our  ears  make  us  aware  that  for  him  this  dark 
casualty  had  a  different  meaning. 

"  Here  love  ends. 
Despair,  ambition  ends, 
All  pleasure  and  all  trouble, 
Although  most  sweet  or  bitter, 
Here  ends  in  sleep  that  is  sweeter 
Than  tasks  most  noble. 

There  is  not  any  book 

Or  face  of  dearest  look 

That  I  would  not  turn  from  now 

To  go  into  the  unknown 

I  must  enter  and  leave  alone 

I  know  not  how. 

The  tall  forest  towers  ; 
Its  cloudy  foliage  lowers 
Ahead,  shelf  above  shelf ; 
Its  silence  I  hear  and  obey 
That  I  may  lose  my  way 
And  mvself." 


85 


F.   W.    HARVEY 

"  Flower-like  and  shy 
You  stand,  sweet  mortal,  at  the  river's  brim  : 
With  what  unconscious  grace 
Your  hmbs  to  some  strange  law  surrendering 
Which  lifts  you  clear  of  our  humanity  ! 

Now  would  I  sacrifice 

Your  breathing,  warmth,  and  all  the  strange  romance 

Of  living  to  a  moment !     Ere  you  break 

The  greater  thing  than  you,  I  would  my  eyes 

Were  basilisk  to  turn  you  to  a  stone. 

So  should  you  be  the  world's  inheritance. 

And  souls  of  unborn  men  should  draw  their  breath 

From  mortal  you,  immortalised  in  Death."  ^ 

Human  beauty,  that  "greater  thing  than  you," 
haunts  mankind.  Its  complex  attraction  maddens  not 
only  saints  and  artists  but  every  honest  heart.  To  arrest 
it,  to  keep  it  steadily  in  view  is  our  greatest  need,  yet  like 
the  wind  it  is  here  and  is  gone.  Having  moved  men  like 
a  hurricane  to  prove  by  devastation  that  their  race  or 
their  religion  is  its  chosen  vehicle,  it  will  be  content  to 
fondle  a  child  with  caressing  indulgence,  turning  her  self- 
will  "to  favour  and  to  prettiness."  Generations  have 
sought  to  mew  it  in  a  sentence,  to  immortalise  it  as  the 
memory  of  a  man  or  the  record  of  a  god's  visit.  Some 
have  claimed  that  only  perfect  form  could  express  it, 
while  others  find  eloquent  a  "  visage  more  marred  than 
that  of  any  man,"  capable  of  suffering  a  greater  persecu- 
tion than  any  other  creature.  The  notion  that  this 
revelation  may  wholly  possess  one  of  ourselves,  one  who 
may  stand  emptied  of  it  like  a  vacant  house  an  hour 
hence,  is  old  and  beautiful.     Yes,  one  lovely  moment  of  a 

1  "  Gloucestershire  Friends.  By  Lieutenant  F.  W.  Harvey.  Sidgwick 
&  Jackson  Ltd.  2s.  6d.  Quotations  by  permission  of  Mrs  Harvey 
and  of  Bishop  Frodsham. 

87 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

single  life  may  have  uttered  what  millions  of  completed 
lives  have  stammered  over  unintelligibly  ;  this  thought 
begets  that  agony  of  fondness  that  would  entrust  the 
brief  ])erfection  of  yoiuig  persons  to  stone  or  metal  rather 
than  leave  it  to  fading  flesh.  Elroy  Flecker,  a  young 
poet  recently  dead,  rivals  the  beautiful  lines  quoted 
above  with  a  similar  invention : 

"  Had  I  the  power 
To  Midas  given  of  old 
To  touch  a  flower 
And  leave  its  petals  gold, 
I  then  might  touch  thy  face, 
Delightful  boy, 
And  leave  a  metal  grace 
A  graven  joy. 

Thus  would  I  slay  — 
Ah,  desperate  device  ! 
The  vital  day 

That  trembles  in  thine  eyes, 
And  let  the  red  lips  close 
Which  sang  so  well 
And  drive  awav  the  rose 
To  leave  a  shell." 

This  vivid  estimation  of  human  beauty  is  proof  of  a 
deep  well  of  poetic  power. 

"  Star  of  my  soul,  thou  gazest 
Upon  the  starry  skies  ; 
I  envy  Heaven,  that  watches 
Thy  face  with  countless  eyes."  ^ 

So  Plato  sang,  and  still,  in  spite  of  astronomy  ;  the 
worth  of  this  soul-thrilled  comeliness  can  counterbalance 
the  magnitude  of  stellar  regions  and  remove  all  terror 
from  the  unclouded  night.  So  great  a  power  has  human 
beauty  when  we  are  alone  with  ourselves  ;    and  yet  few 

*  Translated  by  Kenneth  Freeman  :    Schools  of  Hellas. 

38 


F.  W.  HARVEY 

ideas  have  had  less  weight  in  councils  of  war  and 
parliaments  of  peace.  Commerce  has  been  permitted 
to  oppress  and  ambition  to  outrage  it  to  any  extent. 

But  let  us  return  to  the  poem  I  first  cited.  Lieutenant 
Harvey,  who  won  the  D.C.M.  as  lance-corporal,  was 
allowed  by  the  German  authorities  to  send  it  and  a  little 
volume  of  others  home  from  the  prison  camp  at  Giitersloh. 
Many  judges  would  not  admit  that  his  poem  is  a  rival 
to  Flecker's,  and  the  last  couplet  does  weaken  its  effect ; 
but  then  Flecker  weakened  his  by  two  stanzas  which  I 
have  not  quoted.  Lt.  Harvey's  volume  gives  proof  of 
a  varied  and  powerful  soul ;  but  it  peeps  at  us  from  a 
prison  of  trivial  amusement,  banal  tricks  and  rhjines, 
things  that  Flecker  was  all  his  short  poet-life  at  conscious 
war  with,  staving  them  further  and  further  back  from  his 
small  garden  of  verse  ;  whereas  Harvey  hardly  seems 
conscious  that  they  confine  and  baffle  the  wings  of  his 
Pegasus.  The  gleams  of  pure  poetiy  that  flash  past  the 
bars  of  his  everyday  mentality  are  not  alone  passages  of 
felicity,  but  there  are  also  fine  inevitable  poem-shapes, 
marred  in  execution — not  so  much,  as  in  Sorley's  case, 
from  lack  of  time  to  finish ;  no,  rather  as  though  a 
strange,  insensitive,  surface-personality  intervened  and 
"  gambolled  from  the  matter  "  in  repeating  what  had 
been  conceived.  When  I  first  read  his  volume  I  said, 
"  No,  I  cannot  write  about  this  man,"  and  laid  it  aside  for 
weeks  ;  then  I  happened  to  open  it  at  the  lines  I  have 
quoted  and  immediately  began  to  search  for  other  signs 
of  power  in  the  mass  of  smart  or  pretty  trifles,  and  I 
found  a  few.     He  addresses  a  fallen  comrade — 

"  Swift-footed,  fleeter  yet 
Of  heart.     Swift  to  forget 

The  petty  spite  that  life  or  men  could  show  you  : 
Your  last  long  race  is  won, 
But  beyond  the  sound  of  gun 
You  laugh  and  help  men  onward — if  I  know  you." 

89 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

But  wc  wonder  wliether  he  had  himself  Iieard  the  rhythm 
of  the  Hrst  tliree  hues  when  we  next  read — 

"  O  still  you  laugh  and  walk 
And  sing  and  I'rankly  talk." 

A  doubt  arises  even  over  the  second  three  lines — the 
fatal  influenee  of  a  trick  of  facile  rhyming  seems  already 
to  tame  in  them  the  soaring  stroke — but  with  this  last 
couplet  we  are  waddling  on  ground. 

"  What  is  it  the  breeze  says 
In  London  streets  to-day 
Unto  the  troubled  trees 
Whose  shadoAvs  strew  the  way. 
Whose  leaves  are  all  a-flutter  ? 

'  You  are  wild  ! '  the  rascal  cries. 
The  green  tree  beats  its  wings 
And  fills  the  air  with  sighs. 
'  Wild  !   wild  !  '  the  rascal  sings. 
But  your  feet  are  in  the  gutter  ! 

Men  pass  beneath  the  trees 
Walking  the  pavement  grey, 
They  hear  the  whisperings  tease 
And  at  the  word  he  utters 
Their  hearts  are  green  and  gay. 

Then  like  the  gay,  green  trees, 
They  beat  proud  wings  to  fly, 
But  like  the  fluttering  trees, 
Their  footprints  mark  the  gutters 
Until  the  beggars  die." 

This  poem  has  great  beauty  of  structure ;  it  follows  an 
inevitable  course  from  outstart  to  the  happy  last  line. 
Yet  the  first  line  for  the  sake  of  a  pat  rhyme  is  contorted 
and  rendered  ambiguous  to  the  ear  and  really  runs — 

"  What  is  it  says  the  breeze  " — 
90 


F.  W.  HARVF.Y 

which  seems  to  demand  punctuation  thus — 

"  '  What  is  it  ?  '  says  the  breeze  "— 

whereas  the  sense  is  as  I  have  amended  it.  Besides  this, 
the  two  latter  stanzas  distinctly  fall  off  in  aptness  of 
phrase  as  compared  with  the  first  two. 

The  poems  entitled  Recognition  and  The  Little  Road 
and  the  first  of  the  two  Ballades  are  also  not  only  truly 
inspired  and  well  designed,  but  spoilt  in  similar  ways. 
His  interests  and  sentiments  have  perhaps  a  wider  range 
than  with  most  of  these  poets,  and  are  almost  all  com- 
mendable and  endearing,  only  it  is  expression  makes 
the  poet,  and  here  the  general  effect  is  easy-going  and 
commonplace.  No  doubt  the  facility  with  which  he  is 
amused  by  the  first-coming  features  of  his  ova\  work  and 
of  the  world  is  a  sign  of  youth,  and  makes  his  width  of 
range  the  more  promising.  It  is  rare  indeed  to  find  in 
work,  the  general  allure  of  which  is  so  casual,  lines  so  just, 
direct  and  impassioned  as  were  the  first  five  I  quoted 
from  him,  moving  with  their  own  movement,  uncontrolled 
by  the  conventional  notions  of  form  which  are  habitual 
with  their  author ;  and  they  certainly  should  set  expect- 
ancy on  tiptoe  for  what  he  will  produce  during  the  next 
few  years.  Every  honest  heart  is  at  moments  maddened 
by  a  glimpse  of  beauty  in  behaviour  or  in  persons  :  then 
their  thought  suddenly  darts  upward  as  though  a  robin 
were  possessed  by  the  soul  of  a  lark.  Was  this  such  a 
moment,  or  are  the  other  poems  the  tawdry  swaddling 
of  a  still  unconscious  master  ?  Ability  there  is  plenty  of ; 
his  mundane  effectiveness  may  reach  the  level  of  Kipling's. 

"  In  general,  if  you  want  a  man  to  do  a  dangerous  job  :  — 
Say,  swim  the  Channel,  climb  St  Paul's,  or  break  into  and  rob 
The  Bank  of  England,  why,  you  find  his  wages  must  be 

higher 
Than  if  you  merely  wanted  him  to  light  the  kitchen  fire. 
But  in  the  British  Army  it's  just  the  other  way. 
And  the  maximum  of  danger  means  the  minimum  of  pay." 

91 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

Perhaps  in  the  future  all  journalists  may  be  trained  to 
this  degree  of  ciuining,  and  then,  perhaps  before  the  end 
of  time,  they  may  sicken  even  the  average  man  with 
smartness  in  verse. 

Strangest  of  all,  this  lover  of  beauty  and  this  captive 
of  momentary  effect  have  been  once  at  least  fused  con- 
sciously and  inextricably  in  a  single  poem,  a  successful 
poem. 

THE  BUGLER 

God  dreamed  a  man  ; 
Then,  having  firmly  shut 
Life  like  a  precious  metal  in  his  fist 
Withdrew,  His  labour  done.     Thus  did  begin 
Our  various  divinity  and  sin. 
For  some  to  ploughshares  did  the  metal  twist. 
And  others^ — dreaming  empires — straightway  cut 
Crowns  for  their  aching  foreheads.     Others  beat 
Long  nails  and  heavy  hammers  for  the  feet 
Of  their  forgotten  Lord.     (Who  dares  to  boast 
That  he  is  guiltless  ?)     Otliers  coined  it :  most 
Did  with  it — simply  nothing.     (Here  again 
Who  cries  his  innocence  ?)     Yet  doth  remain 
Metal  unmarred,  to  each  man  more  or  less, 
Whereof  to  fashion  perfect  loveliness. 

For  me,  I  do  but  bear  within  my  hand 

(For  sake  of  Him  our  Lord,  now  long  forsaken) 

A  simple  bugle  such  as  may  awaken 

With  one  high  morning  note  a  drowsing  man  : 

That  wheresoe'er  within  my  motherland 

The  sound  may  come,  'twill  echo  far  and  wide 

Like  pipes  of  battle  calling  up  a  clan. 

Trumpeting  men  through  beauty  to  God's  side. 

Second  thoughts  are  best,  and  this  seems  made  entirely 
of  first  thoughts  ;  images,  attitude,  ever}i;hing ;  and  yet  it 
is  inevitably  shaped  to  a  whole  that  is  itself  throughout. 
The  mad  passion  for  beauty  can  do  so  much  even  with 
92 


F.  W.  HARVEY 

cheap  and  hackneyed  material.  In  the  uncouth,  though 
famihar,  garb  of  crazy  conmion-sense  this  young  soldier 
stands  among  the  crowd  and  blows  his  bugle,  half  con- 
scious of  the  drab  disguise,  half  hoping  it  will  fall  and  he 
find  himself  naked  as  Achilles  ;  and  why  should  he  not 
open  his  eyes  and  "  behold  the  mountain  full  of  horses  and 
chariots  of  fire  "  ? 


d3 


RICHARD   ALDINGTON 

As  the  year  nineteen  hundred  approached  and  was  passed 
young  men  said  :  "  We  are  the  new  century.  How  shall 
we  differ  from  the  old  ?  "  And  elder  folk  said  :  "  Of  course 
the  new  century  must  be  different ;  let  us  try  and  welcome 
it."  Young  poets,  who  wish  to  prove  that  they  are  a  new 
sort,  embrace  theories  and  think  that  these  lend  them 
importance  ;  obviously  they  have  not  produced  enough 
work  to  claim  the  authority  of  masters,  so  they  must 
needs  borrow  if  they  wish  to  impose.  Unfortunately, 
theory  descrbies  art  but  cannot  create.  No  work  succeeds 
because  it  conforms  to  rules  ;  bad  and  good  works  alike 
exemplify  the  practice  of  all  schools. 

The  "  Imagists  "  are  one  small  twig  of  a  branch  of  the 
new  tree  made  by  forking  movements.  They  plead  that 
they  are  not  rebels,  and  point  out  how,  at  least  in  English, 
verse  free  from  rhyme  and  conventional  rhythms  has 
always  existed  ;  besides,  they  admire,  nay  worship,  the 
past.  None  the  less  they  publish  a  manifesto,  and  prove 
their  doctrine  to  be  impressionistic. 

"  The  '  exact '  word  does  not  mean  the  word  which 
exactly  describes  the  object  in  itself,  it  means  the  '  exact ' 
word  which  brings  the  effect  of  that  object  before  the 
reader  as  it  presented  itself  to  the  poet's  mind  at  the  time 
of  writing  the  poem."  ^ 

The  value  of  a  poem  cannot  consist  in  informing  us 
how  a  poet  felt  at  a  given  moment ;  it  may  tell  us  this,  but 
its  value  will  lie  in  the  quality  of  his  feeling  and  the 
felicity  with  which  it  takes  shape.  This  form  is  a  growth 
like  other  organisms.  If,  as  it  grows,  the  poet  says, 
"  But  I  did  not  feel  like  this  or  think  of  that  when  the 
impulse  started  me  off ;  I  am  adulterating  my  inspiration 
with  afterthoughts,"  he  checks  and  thwarts  this  growth, 

^  Some  Imagist  Poets.  Constable  &  Co.  1915.  Quotations  by  per- 
mission of  Lieutenant  Richard  Aldington. 

95 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

and  turns  liis  work  into  a  scientific  document  about  liow 
he  once  felt,  wliicli  possibly  has  very  little  interest  for 
science. 

The  effect  of  this  mistake  is  clearly  seen  in  the  triviality 
and  poverty  of  many  Imagist  poems.  But  Nature  takes 
no  notice  of  creeds  and  sects  and  nicknames,  and  has 
given  Richard  Aldington  such  love  of  beauty  as  amounts 
almost  to  passion,  and  to  H.  D.,  his  wife  and  compeer, 
such  passion  as  must  create  beauty,  despite  no  matter 
what  crippling  theory.  There  is,  of  course,  no  such  thing 
as  legitimate  or  illegitimate  among  aesthetic  means  and 
forms.  Success  in  fulfilling  its  oami  nature  is  the  sole 
criterion  by  which  a  poem  should  be  judged.  This  happy 
couple  are  scholars  as  well  as  poets,  and  have  contributed 
excellent  work  to  The  Poets'  Translation  Series. 

A  lover  of  beauty  is  hurt  every  day  in  London,  where 
ruthless  commercialism  has  produced  a  hell  almost  as 
dreadful  as  that  created  by  ruthless  militarism  in 
Flanders.  Such  a  man  feels  and  resents  a  nameless 
hostility,  yet  he  may  deem  it  a  kind  of  desertion  to  take 
refuge  in  dreams  of  old  Italy  and  ancient  Greece.  He 
wishes  to  be  lojal  to  his  own  day  even  if  it  can  only  be  by 
enlarging  on  his  sufferings. 

WHITECHAPEL  ^ 

Noise  ! 

Iron  hoofs,  iron  wheels,  iron  din 

Of  drays  and  trams  and  feet  passmg  ; 

Iron 

Beaten  to  a  vast  mad  cacophony. 

In  vain  the  slu'ill,  far  cry 
Of  swallows  sweeping  by  : 
In  vain  the  silence  and  green 
Of  meadows  Apriline  ; 
In  vain  the  clear  white  rain — 

^Images.     Richard  Aldington.     The  Poetry  Bookshop. 
90 


RICHARD  ALDINGTON 

Soot ;    mud  ; 

A  nation  maddened  with  labour  ; 

Interminable  collision  of  energies  — 

Iron  beating  upon  iron, 

Smoke  whirling  upwards, 

Speechless,  impotent. 

In  vain  the  shrill,  far  cry 
Of  kittiwakes  that  fly 
Where  the  sea  waves  leap  green. 
The  meadows  Apriline — 

Noise,  iron,  smoke  ; 
Iron,  Iron,  Iron. 

To  my  ear  and  understanding  this  is  improved  by  the 
omission  of  lines  1,  11,  16,  21  and  22.  Accumulations 
of  nouns  and  adjectives  are  characteristic  of  imagists, 
inelegancies  of  syntax  give  much  of  their  work  the  air  of  a 
translation,  as  though  the  difficulty  of  following  a  foreign 
idiom  had  overstrained  the  resources  of  the  writer. 


PEOPLE 

Why  should  you  try  to  crush  me  ? 
Am  I  so  Christ-like  ? 

You  beat  against  me 

Immense  waves,  filthy  with  refuse. 

I  am  the  last  upright  of  a  smashed  breakwater, 

But  you  shall  not  crush  me 

Though  you  bury  me  in  foaming  slime 

And  hiss  your  hatred  about  me. 

You  break  over  me,  cover  me  ; 

I  shudder  at  the  contact ; 

Yet  I  pierce  through  you 

And  stand  up,  torn,  dripping,  shaken, 

But  whole  and  fierce. 

G  97 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

This  is  far  better,  but  a  true  poet  is  rarely  at  his  best  in 
the  expression  of  personal  antagonism.  Admiration  and 
delight  create  beauty. 

"Like  a  gondola  of  green  scented  fruits 
Drifting  along  the  dark  canals  at  Venice, 
You,  O  exquisite  one. 
Have  entered  my  desolate  city. 

The  blue  smoke  leaps 
Like  swirling  clouds  of  birds  vanishing. 
So  my  love  leaps  forth  towards  you, 
Vanishes  and  is  renewed. 

The  flower  which  the  wind  has  shaken 
Is  soon  filled  again  with  rain. 
So  does  my  heart  fill  slow^ly  wdth  tears 
Until  you  return." 

Sensitive  to  beauty,  yet  a  trifle  over-ingenious  ;  let  us 
sample  him  in  a  more  objective  mood. 


THE  FAUN  SEES  SNOW  FOR  THE  FIRST  TIME 

Zeus, 

Brazen- thunder-hurler. 

Cloud- whirler,  son-of-Kronos, 

Send  vengeance  on  these  Oreads 

Who  strew 

White  frozen  flecks  of  mist  and  cloud 

Over  the  brown  trees  and  the  tufted  gi-ass 

Of  the  meadows,  where  the  stream 

Runs  black  through  shining  banks 

Of  bluish  white. 

Zeus, 

Are  the  halls  of  heaven  broken  up 
That  you  flake  down  upon  me 
Feather-strips  of  marble  ? 

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RICHARD  ALDINGTON 

Dis  and  Styx  ! 

When  I  stamp  my  hoof 

The  frozen- cloud- specks  jam  into  the  cleft 

So  that  I  reel  upon  two  slippery  points  .  .  . 

Fool,  to  stand  here  cursing 
When  I  might  be  running  ! 

I  find  this  almost  convincing,  more  so  than  Ledwidge's 
Wife  of  Llezv ;  yet  it  too  savours  of  pedantry  when 
compared  with  Sorley's  Runners. 

AT  NIGHTS 

At  nights  I  sit  here, 

Shading  my  eyes,  shutting  them  if  you  glance  up. 

Pretending  to  doze, 

And  watching  you. 

Thinking. 

I  think  of  when  I  first  saw  the  beauty  of  things  — 

God  knows  I  was  poor  enough  and  sad  enough 

And  humiliated  enough — - 

But  not  all  the  slights  and  the  poorness  and  the  worry 

Could  hide  away  the  green  of  the  poplar  leaves, 

The  ripple  and  light  of  the  little  stream, 

The  pattern  of  the  ducks'  feathers, 

The  dawns  I  saw  in  the  winter 

When  I  went  shooting, 

The  summer  walks  and  the  winter  walks. 

The  hot  days  with  the  cows  coming  down  to  the  water, 

The  flowers, 

Buttercups  and  meadow-sweet  and  hog's  parsley, 

And  the  larks  singing  in  the  morning,  and  the  thrushes 

Trilling  at  dusk  when  I  went  out  into  the  fields 

Muttering  poetry. 

I  looked  at  the  world  as  God  did 

When  first  He  made  it. 

I  saw  that  it  was  good. 

And  now  at  nights, 

Now  that  everything  has  gone  right  somehow. 

And  I  have  friends  and  books 

And  no  more  bitterness, 

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SOME  SOLDIER   POETS 

I  sit  here,  shading  my  eyes, 
Fct'ping  at  you,  watching  you. 
Thinking. 

Good  !  He  is  truly  himself,  Ijut  tlic  mood  has  hardly 
momentum  enougli  to  create  perfect  form.  But  when  at 
last  we  get  passion  we  get  song. 

AFTER  TWO  YEARS 

She  is  all  so  slight 
And  tender  and  white 
As  a  May  morning. 
She  walks  without  hood 
At  dusk.     It  is  good 
To  hear  her  sing. 

It  is  God's  will 
That  I  shall  love  her  still 
As  He  loves  Mary. 
And  night  and  day 
I  will  go  forth  to  pray 
That  she  love  me. 

There  is  a  third  stanza,  but  it  rather  detracts  from 
these  two,  which  are  perfect  in  and  by  themselves. 

Since  I  wrote  the  above  Richard  Aldington  has  aug- 
mented his  gift  to  the  world  by  two  tiny  volumes.^ 
Reverie  and  The  Love  Poems  of  Myrrhine  and  Konallis. 
This  last  adds  a  new  facet  to  his  talent,  for  it  covers  the 
same  ground  as  Les  Amours  de  Bilitis,  by  Pierre  Louis, 
compared  to  which  these  paragraphs  seem  shrunk,  faint 
and  uninspired.  Uncnglish  pedantries  such  as  "  goldcn- 
hyacinth-curled  hair "  or  "  golden-wrought  knees  "  or 
"  vine-leaf -cai'ved  armlet "  affect  us  like  the  despair  of 
a  translator  after  scratching  his  head  for  a  long  time. 
"  Gold-fiowered-crowned  drink  "  indeed  !      A   rhetorical 

^  Privately  issued  by  Charles  C.  Bubb  at  his  Private  Press,  Cleveland. 
1917. 

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RICHARD  ALDINGTON 

use  of  such  adjectives  as  white,  swift,  silver,  golden,  also 
detracts  from  that  physical  precision  which  is  the  glory 
of  English.  Yet  the  choice  perfume  of  these  poems 
haunts  the  mind.  Christian  civilisation  has  in  nothing  so 
failed  to  uphold  its  Founder's  criterions  as  in  censorious- 
ness.  Moral  disparagement  of  one  sort  or  another 
permeates  it.  "  Judge  not  that  ye  be  not  judged  "  looms 
from  far  in  the  dim  and  impracticable.  Young  men  are, 
however,  often  open-minded  and  gentle  towards  sexual 
licentiousness  ;  it  comes  easily  to  them.  Allowing  for 
this,  I  still  think  that  these  spare  paragraphs,  which  so 
poorly  represent  strophes,  are  redolent  with  that  temper 
which  not  only  refrains  from  censure,  but  does  not  judge, 
though  in  his  case  armed  with  what  is  called  "  the  best 
right  to. "  These  outworn  forms  of  pagan  life  are  regarded 
simply  and  graciously,  if  a  trifle  fondly.  So  to  cherish 
distant  things  is  rare  ;  and  their  faded  colours  revive 
under  its  kindness,  as  the  dust-scored  effacement  of  some 
broken  shell  of  a  freshly  excavated  vase  might  be  vivified 
by  a  passing  shower. 

H.  D.  takes  us  into  another  world,  the  tragic  world  of 
those  who  strive  with  the  Sphinx.  Is  what  we  see  con- 
trolled from  the  outside,  or  does  the  cosmos  live  ?  Are  we 
ourselves  shaped  by  inspiration  or  by  the  pressure  of 
conditions  ?  And  if  there  are  two  forces,  which  will  be 
master  in  the  long  run  ?  Passionate  minds  grapple  with 
this  problem  ;  their  doubts,  their  faiths,  their  despairs 
are  the  result.  Goethe's  Prometheus  is  the  first  modern 
poem  that  shakes  us  with  these  emotions,  and  declares 
unending  war  on  all  external  tyrants,  however  strong. 
His  maturity  could  not  finish  what  he  had  written  ;  the 
crisis  was  past,  less  tragic  questions  engrossed  his 
attention ;  but  I  venture  to  think  that  H.  D.'s 
Pygmalion  touches  as  great  moments  as  did  his 
insuppressibly  creative  Titan  whose  defiance  cries  out 
to  Zeus : 

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SOME  SOLDIER   POETS 

"  Here  sit  I,  and  fashion  men 

After  mine  ()\vn  image, 
Of  like  tem])cr  with  me, 
To  suffer  and  weep. 
To  enjoy  and  rejoiee 
And  lieed  thee  as  little 
As  I." 

I.eopardi  and  Arnold  have  sinee  prodneed  great  poems 
in  this  key  :  the  doomed  fragility  of  the  lovely  broom 
bush  on  the  slopes  of  Vesuvius  is  an  apt  and  moving  image 
for  the  despair  inspired  l)y  the  stupendous  inequality 
between  what  is  exquisite  within  and  brutal  without  ; 
and  in  Arnold's  Empedocles  the  despair  of  the  man  who 
has  neglected  life  for  thought  is  strangely  capped  by 
youth's  serene  joy  in  the  harmonious  world  which  it 
inherits.  But  H.  D.'s  sculptor,  whose  statues  come  to 
life,  not,  as  in  the  old  story,  to  content  as  a  mistress  or 
comfort  as  a  wife,  but  silently  to  leave  him  in  disdain,  or 
as  though  they  were  of  too  different  a  nature  to  commune 
with  him,  discovers  new  abysses  of  tragic  emotion  for  the 
indomitable  creator's  loneliness,  ignorance  and  relative 
insignificance. 

The  poem  is  too  long  and  ill  put  together  to  quote  as  a 
whole.  Too  many  images  are  used  :  that  of  fire,  that  of 
heat,  and  that  of  light,  no  doubt  of  intense  distinctness 
to  the  writer,  collide  together  and  confuse  the  reader,  who 
has  not  shared  the  long  meditations  which  preceded  the 
pangs  and  joys  of  creation.  Fortunately  by  simple 
omission  a  satisfying  simplicity  can  be  obtained. 

PYGMALION 

I  MADE  god  upon  god 

Step  from  the  cold  rock, 

I  made  the  gods  less  than  men. 

For  I  was  a  man  and  they  my  work. 

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RICHARD  ALDINGTON 

And  now  what  is  it  that  has  come  to  pass  ? 

"  Each  of  the  gods,  perfect 
Cries  out  from  a  perfect  throat : 
You  are  useless  ; 
No  marble  can  bind  me 
No  stone  suggest. 
They  have  melted  into  the  light 
And  I  am  desolate. 
They  have  melted 
Each  from  his  plinth, 
Each  one  departs. 

They  have  gone  : 

What  agony  can  express  my  grief  ? 

Each  from  his  marble  base 

Has  stepped  into  the  light 

And  my  work  is  for  naught." 

And  after  this,  though  before  the  passage  occurs  in 
the  poem,  the  bereaved  sculptor  enters  on  an  agony  of 
interpretation. 

"  Which  am  I 
The  stone  or  the  power 
Which  lifts  the  rock  from  the  earth  ?  " 

Or  again — 

"  Which  is  the  god. 
Which  the  stone 
The  god  takes  for  his  use  ?  " 

The  question  debated  would  seem  to  be  whether  he  was 
the  power  which  created  those  gods  or  whether  he  himself 
had  been  made  by  the  power  which  took  them  away.  Is 
he  himself  the  god  ?  "or  is  this  arrogance ?  "  or  are  they, 
his  handiwork,  the  power  that  shapes  him  unperceived? 
But  although  most  of  it  is  pregnant  with  splendid  sug- 
gestions, I  can  make  neither  head  nor  tail  of  it  as  it  stands. 
Now  what  I  have  quoted  is  grander  poetrj^  than  anything 

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SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

I  have  read,  cither  in  French  or  in  Enghsh,  produced  by 
tlic  so-called  re1)cl  poets.  TJiis  cry  over  the  soul's  effort 
that  is  lost  in  the  ^vorld  is  grander  tlian  anything  I  have 
quoted  from  these  Soldier  Poets.  Have  we  not  seen 
man's  wonderful  creations  go  out  from  tlie  workshop 
and  join  themselves  to  tlie  hostile  gods,  the  inclement 
conditions  of  his  life.  How  many  creeds,  how  many 
social  orders  that  seemed  stable  and  trustworthy  have 
melted  into  air  !  or,  like  soiled  and  rusting  weapons, 
gangrened  wounds  dealt  those  they  were  fashioned  to 
defend  !  Vast  wealth,  created  at  immense  cost  in  toil, 
in  shame,  in  wrong  and  in  suffering,  is  even  now  being 
used  to  damage  and  destroy  men  on  a  huger  scale  than 
earthquakes  achieve.  This  image  goes  deeper  than  the 
forlorn  agony  of  the  artist ;  it  is  a  universal  tragedy 
that  what  we  make  makes  us  and  then  breaks  us  like 
a  hostile  power  ;  and  can  we  know  that  we  are  shaped  by 
divinity,  when  it  is  the  outside  pressure  that  hews  roughly 
and  desecrates  our  hopes  ?  Passion  and  power  are 
present  in  others  of  H.  D.'s  poems,  but  nowhere  else  so 
successfully. 

Like  Orestes  and  Electra,  this  young  poet  and  poetess 
stand  hand  in  hand,  and  a  sculptor  might  well  drav/  a 
splendid  inspiration  from  their  intrepidity ;  but  perhaps 
painting  could  better  express  how  they  face  the  colossal 
wickedness  of  the  modern  world  and  its  tragedy,  as  the 
children  of  Agamemnon  faced  the  cumulative  murderous 
treacheries  of  "  Pelops'  line."  Young,  severe,  and  de- 
termined to  live  and  die  in  defence  of  that  ideal  beauty 
that  for  us  as  for  them  is  called  Greece,  let  us  picture 
them  under  the  dark  pall  of  the  war,  but  behind  them  a 
glimpse  of  those  blue  seas  and  temple-cro^Mied  cliffs.  Or 
shall  he  show  her  his  hands  as  in  a  little  prose  poem 
written  from  the  trenches  ? 

"  I  am  grieved  for  our  hands,  our  hands  that  have 
caressed  roses  and  women's  flesh,  old  lovely  books  and 
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RICHARD  ALDINGTON 

marbles  of  Carrara.  I  am  grieved  for  our  hands  that 
were  so  reverent  in  beauty's  service,  so  glad  of  beauty's 
tresses,  hair  and  silken  robe  and  gentle  fingers,  so  glad 
of  beauty  of  bronze  and  wood  and  stone  and  rustling 
parchment.     So  glad,  so  reverent,  so  white.  .  .  . 

"  I  am  grieved  for  our  hands.  ..." 

She  holds  the  torch  near  to  look  and  its  light  floods 
her  face,  while  he  smiles,  for  she  reveals  her  own  un- 
conscious beauty  in  the  act  of  pitying  his  hands,  blunted, 
stiffened  and  begrimed  by  his  foul  task. 


105 


ALAN   SEEGER 

Love,  arms  and  song,  and  a  noble  frankness  that  asserts, 
"  My  kingdom  is  of  this  world,"  characterise  America's 
leading  soldier  poet,  who  fell  in  action  on  4th  July  1916.     | 

Alan  Seeger  was  born  in  New  York  in  1888,  of  old  New 
England  parentage.  For  ten  years  Staten  Island,  in  the 
mouth  of  the  harbour,  was  his  home.  Later  the  family 
settled  at  Mexico  City,  in  the  tropics,  but  7400  feet  above 
the  sea.  He  entered  Harvard  in  1906  and  came  to  Paris 
in  1912,  and,  when  the  war  broke  out,  was  among  the 
first  half-hundred  of  his  countrymen  to  enlist  in  the 
Foreign  Legion  of  France,  and  soon  writes  from  the  Front : 

"  I  have  always  thirsted  for  this  kind  of  thing,  to  be 
present  where  the  pulsations  are  liveliest.  Every  minute 
here  is  worth  weeks  of  ordinary  experience.  .  .  .  This  will 
spoil  one  for  any  other  kind  of  life.  .  .  .  Death  is  nothing 
terrible  after  all.  It  may  mean  something  even  more 
wonderful  than  life.  It  cannot  possibly  mean  anything 
worse  to  a  good  soldier.  .  .  .  Success  in  life  means  doing 
that  thing  than  which  nothing  else  conceivable  seems 
more  noble  or  satisfying  or  remunerative,  and  this  enviable 
state  I  can  truly  say  I  enjoy,  for  had  I  the  choice,  I  would 
be  nowhere  else  in  the  world  than  where  I  am."  ^ 

From  him  as  from  Grenfell  this  sentiment  comes  in- 
evitably ;  and  he  was  no  soldier  by  profession,  but,  in  so 
far  as  he  had  chosen  any,  a  poet.  At  first  sight  they  seem 
twin  natures  in  ardour,  in  frankness,  in  courage,  in  de- 
votion ;  only  gradually  can  the  spirit  become  reconciled 
to  admitting  an  immense  difference. 

The  temptation  is  to  apply  here  the  common  English 
prejudice  as  to  where  the  American  fails.  But  this  would 
be  uncritical,  for  exceptional  natures  least  conform  to 

1  Poems  by-Alan  Seeger.  Introduction  by  W.  Archer.  Constable  & 
Co.  Quotations  by  permission  of  C.  L.  Seeger,  Esq.,  and  Messrs 
Constable. 

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SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

national  foi])lcs.  Seeger  contrasts  with  Grcnfell  as  Byron 
witli  Shelley  rather  than  as  Yankee  with  Britisher.  Only 
by  erushing  the  grapes  of  his  thought  against  a  fine  palate 
shall  we  be  able  to  distinguish  their  flavour  from  very 
highly  prized  fruit.  After  a  few  pages  his  clarity,  like 
that  of  Swinburne,  confuses  the  reader,  for  if  his  virtue 
is  not  to  hesitate,  his  fault  is  to  let  the  thread  sag  in  the 
hurry  and  volume  of  eloquence ;  and  this  great  fluency 
and  facility  accompany  a  lack  of  delicate  choicefulness. 
In  vain  you  search  for  such  precision  in  joy  as  inspired 
Ledwidge's  happiest  images,  or  for  details  that  amount  to 
revelations  as  did  Thomas's  best.  All  kinds  of  beauty 
are  welcomed,  but  too  indiscriminately.  "  You  will  say 
they  are  Persian  attire  ;  but  let  them  be  changed,"  is  the 
instinctive  comment  of  many  resolute  minds  on  encounter- 
ing to-day  that  flaunting  habit  which  ranges  women  and 
wine  in  a  single  category'.  Rakish  nakedness  offends 
their  studied  composure,  and  others  may  be  sui-prised  to 
find  neither  fatigue,  hopelessness  nor  cynicism  in  the 
voice  that  proclaims  : 

"  And  m  old  times  I  should  have  prayed  to  her 
Whose  haunt  the  groves  of  windy  Cyprus  were. 
To  prosper  me  and  crown  with  good  success 
My  will  to  make  of  you  the  rose-twined  bowl 
From  whose  inebriating  brim  my  soul 
Shall  drink  its  last  of  earthly  happiness." 

This  is  from  one  of  a  series  of  sonnets  written  during 
leave  from  the  Front.  Another  with  the  same  object 
pursues  : 

"  Enchanting  girl,  my  faith  is  not  a  thing 
By  futile  prayers  and  vapid  psalm-singing 
To  vent  in  crowded  nave  and  public  pew. 
My  creed  is  simple  :  that  the  world  is  fair. 
And  beauty  the  best  thing  to  worship  there, 
And  I  confess  it  by  adoring  you." 

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ALAN  SEEGER 

And  this  world  is  defied  as  gallantly  as  the  other  : 

"  Let  not  propriety  nor  prejudice 
Nor  the  precepts  of  jealous  age  deny 
What  Sense  so  incontestably  affirms  ; 
Cling  to  the  blessed  moment  and  drink  deep 
Of  the  sweet  cup  it  tends,  as  there  alone 
Were  that  which  makes  life  worth  the  pain  to  live." 

Nay,  not  even  death,  and  what  dreams  may  follow,  can 
give  him  pause : 

"  Exiled  afar  from  youth  and  happy  love, 
If  Death  should  ravish  my  fond  spirit  hence 
I  have  no  doubt  but,  like  a  homing  dove. 
It  would  return  to  its  dear  residence, 
And  through  a  thousand  stars  find  out  the  road 
Back  into  earthly  flesh  that  was  its  loved  abode." 

Neither  heaven  nor  the  possibilities  of  time  and  space 
can  offer  anything  better,  a  return  to  known  delights  is  all 
that  can  be  desired.  The  old  have  not  infrequently  gazed 
back  with  something  of  this  feeling,  and  the  illusions  of 
perspective  may  excuse  them ;  but  that  a  young  man 
should  be  so  certain  that  he  has  seen  the  bottom  of  the 
cup  of  happiness,  and  that  it  could  never  be  refilled  with 
rarer  liquors,  suggests  a  near-sighted  imagination.  So 
masterful  a  conviction  that  no  finer  means  than  those 
you  were  born  with  could  achieve  more  exquisite  ends 
sets  the  mind  pondering  ;  and  a  plausible  philosophy 
might  maintain  that  youth's  vivid  apprehension  of  the 
M^orth  of  actual  objects,  persons  and  events  was  the 
source  of  all  significance,  the  criterion  by  which  every- 
thing else  is  really  judged.  Wordsworth  could  almost 
have  subscribed  to  this  belief ;  he  expressed  a  very 
similar  intuition  though  with  a  less  truculent  directness. 
In  fact  I  think  this  comparison  brings  home  to  us  a  failure 
in  the  mood  of  Alan  Seeger's  ecstasy.  We  have  all  met 
these  gifted  young  men  who  seem  to  tread  above  the 

109 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

heads  of  the  crowd  ;  perhaps  most  of  us  can  recall  some- 
thing of  how  it  ft-els  inside  them.  The  most  coy  have 
known  the  itch  to  swagger,  the  most  staid  have  longed  to 
shout  from  the  house-top,  and  modesty  itself  has  desired 
to  stand  forth  naked  and  unashamed  ;  so  that  a  deep 
and  widespread  welcome  greets  these  manifestations  even 
among  those  who  dare  not  avow  their  approval  and 
whose  lives  would  contradict  them  if  they  did.  Words- 
worth himself  confessed  that  he  had  not  written  love 
poems  because  if  he  had  done  so  they  would  have  been 
too  warm  for  publication. 

"All  true  speech  and  large  avowal 
Which  the  jealous  soul  concedes, 
All  man's  heart  that  brooks  bestowal. 
All  frank  faith  which  passion  breeds." 

are  of  the  very  essence  of  poetry,  and  will  be  cherished 
by  every  loyal  nature.  Propriety  is  forbidden  to  intervene 
when  soul  communes  with  soul,  her  sphere  is  downstairs 
in  the  world  of  half  relations  and  approximate  intercourse. 
But  in  proportion  as  you  claim  to  go  naked,  you  must 
keep  near  to  the  heart  of  things,  and  make  the  very  truth 
your  inseparable  companion.  Anything  off-hand,  smy- 
thing  insensitive  or  not  quite  alive  offends  these  com- 
municants, like  the  touch  of  a  coi-pse.  Humbleness  like 
that  of  a  child  is  born  from  this  intensity.  Any  thought 
of  the  myriad  eyes  that  overpeer  a  stage  should  be  im- 
possible ;  the  world  is  forgotten  when  the  spirit  dances 
naked  in  the  light  to  which  joy  entrusts  it — tender  joy  for 
whom  the  damage  of  the  pale  green,  ruby-eyed,  lace-winged 
fly  is  a  calamity  to  avert  with  tears  and  supplications. 
"Everything  that  lives  is  holy."  If  Seeger  lives  in  his 
poetry,  everything  else  passes  like  a  ghost,  like  a  reference 
only  :  his  one  imperious  desire  is  to  cast  a  personal  spell 
upon  us  all.  Will  not  something  unmistakably  itself 
arrest  tliis  fervid  eloquence  that  deals  in  clouds  and  stars 
110 


ALAN  SEEGER 

and  all  the  commonplaces  of  poetry  with  such  profusion  ! 
Were  but  the  young  women  addressed,  ever  qualified  by 
an  adjective  proper  to  some  one  girl !  No,  Alan  Seeger 
is  alone  felt,  with  this  delightful  freshness,  a  presence, 
an  inspiration  ! 

"  Sidney,  in  whom  the  hey-day  of  romance 
Came  to  its  precious  and  most  perfect  flower. 
Whether  you  turneyed  with  victorious  lance 
Or  brought  sweet  roundelays  to  Stella's  bower, 
I  give  myself  some  credit  for  the  way 
I  have  kept  clean  of  what  enslaves  and  lowers, 
Shmmed  the  ideals  of  our  present  day 
And  studied  those  that  were  esteemed  in  yours — 
For,  turning  from  the  mob  that  buys  Success 
By  sacrificing  all  Life's  better  part, 
Down  the  free  roads  of  human  happiness 
I  frolicked,  poor  of  purse  but  light  of  heart, 
And  lived  in  strict  devotion  all  along 
To  my  three  idols — Love  and  Arms  and  Song." 

"  I  could  accuse  myself  of  such  things  that  it  were 
better  my  mother  had  not  borne  me.  .  .  .  We  are  arrant 
knaves  all  " — in  speaking  thus  was  Hamlet  so  certainly 
mad  as  this  sonnet  implies  ?  The  worry  and  stress  that 
"  honesty  of  puipose  and  intellectual  honesty  "  cost 
Grenfell  are  remembered  with  regret. 

"I  camiot  rest 
While  aught  of  beauty  in  any  path  untrod 
Swells  into  bloom  and  spreads  sweet  charms  abroad 
Un worshipped  of  my  love.     I  cannot  see 
In  Life's  profusion  and  passionate  brevity 
How  hearts  enamoured  of  life  can  strain  too  much 
Li  one  long  tension  to  hear,  to  see,  to  touch." 

He  is  too  eager,  too  arrogant,  to  await  the  visit  of  those 
wonders  which  steal  unsought  into  consciousness.  A 
"  wise  passiveness  "  was  no  mood  of  his.  His  ambition 
emulates  Byron's,  who  hated  to  think  himself  a  mere  poet 

111 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

and  itched  for  acted  glory  :   thus  Seeger,  gazing  beyond 
the  war's  end,  cries  : 

"  And  the  great  cities  of  the  world  shall  yet 
Be  golden  frames  for  me  in  which  to  set 
New  masterpieces  of  more  rare  romance." 

He  fears  no  repetition  of  that  defeat  which  yet  en- 
chanted the  world  with  its  misanthropy  and  cynicism, 
but  strains  after  a  vision  fellow  to  that  followed  by  the 
pilgrim  lord  from  Harrow  to  Missolonghi.  If  in  spite  of 
failure  this  temperament  achieved  so  much,  what  might 
it  not  succeed  in  ?  So  active,  so  independent,  so  daring 
a  nature  has  as  many  opportunities  of  acquiring  wisdom 
as  it  has  of  refusing  to  bow  its  head  under  ruin.  Though 
a  soul  consciously  poses  while  loving,  though  when  heroic 
it  must  be  setting  an  example  to  half  the  world,  this 
effrontery,  largely  inexperience,  may  betoken  the  verj^ 
vigour  that  can  grapple  with  the  monster  fact  on  the 
soul's  behalf.  Already  he  can  philosophise  his  pre- 
occupation with  sexual  passion. 

"  Oh  Love  whereof  my  boyhood  was  the  dream 
My  youth  the  beautiful  novitiate. 
Life  was  so  slight  a  thing  and  thou  so  great. 
How  could  I  make  thee  less  than  all  supreme  ! 
In  thy  sweet  transports  not  alone  I  thought 
Mingled  the  twain  that  panted  breast  to  breast, 
The  sun  and  stars  throbbed  with  them  ;  they  were  caught 
Into  the  pulse  of  Nature.  .  .  . 

Doubt  not  that  of  a  perfect  sacrifice 

That  soul  partakes  whose  inspiration  fills 

The  spring-time  and  the  depth  of  summer  skies 

The  rainbow  and  the  clouds  behind  the  lulls, 

That  excellence  in  earth  and  air  and  sea 

That  makes  things  as  they  are  the  real  divinity."' 

Yes,  his  brain  keeps  pace  with  his  eloquence ;   but  his 
soul  ?      Hasty    and   cnide    and   licensed   to   scorn   the 

112 


ALAN  SEEGER 

maimed  and  mauled  by  youth's  ignorance  of  irreparable 
damage,  he  does  not  hesitate,  on  returning  to  the  trenches, 
to  offer  his  gallant  comrades  these  ungenerous  lines  which 
were  possibly  not  really  aimed  at  the  invalids  he  had  met 
at  Biarritz,  but  at  those  whom  he  could  never  forget,  his 
equals  in  youth  and  strength,  who  then  still  lingered  in 
the  States. 

"Apart  sweet  women  (for  whom  heaven  be  blessed). 
Comrades,  you  cannot  think  how  thin  and  blue 
Look  the  left-overs  of  mankind  that  rest, 
Now  that  the  cream  has  been  skimmed  off  in  you. 
.  .  .  we  turn  disdainful  backs 
On  that  poor  world  we  scorn,  yet  die  to  shield,  — 
That  world  of  cowards,  hypocrites  and  fools." 

He  has  given  himself  for  the  freedom  of  all  future  souls, 
what  right  have  we  to  question  whether  he  gave  his  own 
conscience  due  reverence  ?  Could  we  have  divined  King 
Lear  from  reading  Venus  and  Adonis  ?  That  ready 
aptness  of  phrase  which  in  my  citations  has  delighted  the 
reader  is  constantly  achieved  in  his  later  poems,  if  only 
by  four  or  six  lines  at  a  time.  And  though  the  inspired 
peaks  rise  tier  behind  tier  above  this  plateau,  you  find 
few  flowers  more  brilliant  without  climbing  higher.  Yet 
that  failure  in  delicate  choicefulness  insistently  prophesies 
woe,  and  was  not  so  striking  in  Swinburne  or  more  so  in 
Byron  at  his  years.  The  Deserted  Garden,  his  longest 
poem,  yielded  as  abundant  opportunities  as  Venus  and 
Adonis  could,  but  no  line  like 

"  A  lily  prisoned  in  a  gale  of  snow  " 

takes  the  advantage.  In  spite  of  formlessness,  how 
delightful  the  Keats  of  Endyniion  would  have  made  this 
old  Mexican  garden,  where  the  young  Seeger  dreams  the 
meetings  of  bygone  lovers.  He,  however,  only  maintains 
his  obvious  efficiency,  and  we  are  never  "  surprised  with 
joy  "  :  in  the  end  we  are  only  surprised  that  he  can  keep 
H  113 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

it  up,  as  we  often  have  been  when  Swinburne  was  not 
first  rate.  Did  the  magnoha  bud  of  this  large  soul  lodge 
a  canker  ?  Yet,  though  we  can  only  surmise  what  his 
full-blown  splendour  might  have  been,  he  was  ever  so 
slightly  opening  ;  his  latest  sonnets  are  not  only  the  most 
manifold,  but  deeper  and  almost  fragrant. 

"  Seeing  you  have  not  come  with  me,  nor  spent 
This  day's  suggestive  beauty  as  we  ought, 
I  have  gone  forth  alone  and  been  content 
To  make  you  mistress  only  of  my  thought." 

"  I  am  the  field  of  undulating  grass 
And  you  the  gentle  perfume  of  the  Spring, 
And  all  my  lyric  being,  when  you  pass, 
Is  bowed  and  filled  with  sudden  murmuring." 

"  For  I  have  ever  gone  untied  and  free, 
The  stars  and  my  high  thoughts  for  company  ; 
Wet  with  the  salt  spray  and  the  mountain  showers, 
I  have  had  the  sense  of  space  and  amplitude, 
And  love  in  many  places,  silver- shoed, 
Has  come  and  scattered  all  my  path  with  flowers." 

Four  lines  from  two  sonnets,  six  from  a  third,  and  you 
build  up  a  new  one  richer  and  stronger  than  any  of  the 
three.  For  all  these  flashes  are  like  the  flap  of  a  flame  in 
a  swirl  of  smoke  ;  some  pleasure  in  his  own  attitude,  some 
self-assertion  causes  the  momentary  brilliance  among  the 
ever-flowing  grey  ghosts  of  scheduled  ornament  which 
make  the  bulk  of  a  rhetorical  style.  But  he  has  gentle, 
more  promising  moods. 

"  There  have  been  times  when  I  could  storm  and  plead, 

But  you  shall  never  hear  me  supplicate. 

These  long  months  that  have  magnified  my  need 

Have  made  my  asking  less  importunate  ; 

For  now  small  favours  seem  to  me  so  great 

That  not  the  courteous  lovers  of  old  time 

Were  more  content  to  rule  themselves  and  wait, 

Easing  desire  with  discourse  and  sweet  rhyme." 
Ill 


ALAN  SEEGER 

He  even  stands  staring  at  the  different  tempers  created 
in  him  by  self-seeking  and  self-devotion. 

*'  Oh  love  of  woman,  you  are  known  to  be 
A  passion  sent  to  plague  the  hearts  of  men  ; 
For  every  one  you  bring  felicity 
Bringing  rebuffs  and  wretchedness  to  ten. 
I  have  been  oft  where  human  life  sold  cheap 
And  seen  men's  brains  spilled  out  about  their  ears 
And  yet  that  never  cost  me  any  sleep  ; 
I  lived  untroubled  and  I  shed  no  tears. 
Fools  prate  how  war  is  an  atrocious  thing  ; 
I  always  knew  that  nothing  it  implied 
Equalled  the  agony  and  suffering 
Of  him  who  loves  and  loves  unsatisfied. 
War  is  a  refuge  to  a  heart  like  this  ; 
Love  only  tells  it  what  true  torture  is." 

Playing  his  part  with  the  best  at  the  Front,  he  was  by 
no  means  merely  acting  a  Message  to  America  in  order  to 
bring  her  into  line.  He  really  loved  France  and  under- 
stood something  of  what  she  stands  for  in  civilisation. 
He  is  compact  with  generosity  which  is  none  the  less  real 
for  being  self-appreciated. 

"  O  friends,  in  your  fortunate  present  ease 
(Yet  faced  by  the  self- same  facts  as  these), 
If  you  would  see  how  a  race  can  soar 
That  has  no  love,  but  no  fear  of  war. 
How  each  can  turn  from  his  private  role 
That  all  may  act  as  a  perfect  whole, 
How  men  can  live  up  to  the  place  they  claim, 
And  a  nation  jealous  of  its  good  name. 
Be  true  to  its  proud  inheritance. 
Oh,  look  over  here  and  learn  from  France  !  " 

And  he  too  seeks  to  think  well  of  Death,  and,  having 
most  fancied  himself  as  a  lover,  thinks  himself  ' '  half  in 
love  with  "  glorious  Death. 

115 


SOMK  SOLDIKR  POETS 

"  I  know  not  il"  in  risking  my  best  days 
I  sliall  leave  utterly  behind  nic  here 
This  dream  that  lightened  me  tiu-ough  lonesome  ways 
And  that  no  disappointment  made  less  dear ; 
Sometimes  I  think  that,  where  the  hill-tops  rear 
Tiieir  white  entrenehments  back  of  tangled  wire, 
liehind  the  mist  Death  only  can  make  clear. 
There,  like  Bnmhilde  ringed  with  flaming  fire, 
Lies  what  shall  ease  my  heart's  immense  desire  : 
There,  where  beyond  the  horror  and  the  pain 
Only  the  brave  shall  pass,  only  the  strong  attain." 

But  from  a  greater  depth  comes  the  simple  fatalism 
which  informs  his  finest  sayings  about  life  and  love. 

MAKTOOB 

A  SHELL  surprised  our  post  one  day 
And  killed  a  comrade  at  my  side  ; 
My  heart  was  sick  to  sec  the  way 
He  suffered  as  he  died. 

I  dug  about  the  place  he  fell. 
And  found,  no  bigger  than  my  thumb, 
A  fragment  of  the  splintered  shell 
In  warm  aluminum. 

I  melted  it  and  made  a  mould 

And  poured  it  in  the  opening 

And  worked  it.  when  the  cast  was  cold, 

Into  a  shapely  ring. 

And  when  my  ring  was  smooth  and  bright, 
Holding  it  on  a  rounded  stick, 
For  seal,  I  bade  a  Turco  write 
Maktoob  in  Arabic. 

Maktoob  !    "  'Tis  written  !  "     So  they  think, 
These  children  of  the  desert,  who 
From  its  immense  expanses  drink 
Some  of  its  grandeur  too. 

IIG 


ALAN  SEEGER 

And  after  some  less  convincing  circumstance  of  entrj^  to 
a  Valhalla  he  ends  by  telling  how  these  graven  characters 
calm  him. 

"  When  not  to  hear  some  try  to  talk. 
And  some  to  clean  their  guns  and  sing. 
And  some  dig  deeper  in  the  chalk  ^ — 
I  look  upon  my  ring  : 

Aid  nerves  relax  that  were  most  tense, 
And  Death  comes  whistling  down  unheard, 
As  I  consider  all  the  sense 
Held  in  that  mystic  word. 

And  it  brings,  quieting  like  balm 
My  heart  whose  flutterings  have  ceased, 
The  resignation  and  the  calm 
And  wisdom  of  the  East." 

Ample  quotation  seemed  needed  to  illumine  this 
soldier's  fine  attitude.  His  style  takes  no  end  of  room ; 
more  time  was  demanded  than  love  and  arms  could  spare 
for  it  to  grow  as  rare  as  it  was  large.  Still,  granted  a 
more  prolonged  lease  of  pleasure-hunting,  we  might  have 
had  to  deplore  luxuriance  tangled  to  perversity,  no  longer 
merely  grown  too  fast  for  strength.  To  what  extent  war 
was  a  tonic  to  his  extravagance  remains  uncertain,  even 
after  repeated  readings  of  his  later  poems.  Every  young 
man  has  perforce  many  possible  careers — unwritten  books 
whose  titles  and  contents  we  may  dream  of,  though  hands 
will  never  part  their  leaves,  nor  eyes  peruse.  Still  there 
is  some  faint  compensation  for  this  in  esteeming  them  at 
their  highest  possible  value,  though  it  but  increase  our 
sense  of  loss  ;  for  worth  conceived  is  prophetic  of  that 
yet  to  be  revealed  by  the  ever-teeming  future. 

Look  at  him  crowning  himself,  prematurely,  as  Shake- 
speare's hero  prince  did,  yet,  like  him,  conscious  of 
deserving  the  "  rigol  "  by  innate  capacity  and  determina- 

117 


SOME  SOULIER  POETS 

tion.  Both  hands  raise  the  empty  hoop,  then  pause,  for 
through  it  stars  watch  him,  brilliant  and  remote.  In 
black  bronze  he  stands  for  ever  returning  their  gaze — no 
work  of  Phidias,  rather  by  some  Scopas  or  Praxiteles, 
whose  more  indulgent  rin-thm  induces  a  musical  ripple 
throughout  the  war-hardened  muscles  of  his  twenty-eight 
years. 


118 


THE   BEST   POETHY 

I  SHALL  attempt  to  show  you  why  the  best  poetry 
usually  passes  unobserved,  and  how  you  may  train 
yourselves  to  recognise  it. 

Matthew  Arnold,  our  greatest  literary  critic  in  the  last 
century,  thought  that  if  we  were  to  draw  full  benefit  from 
poetry  "  we  must  accustom  ourselves  to  a  high  standard 
and  to  a  strict  judgment,"  and  thus  learn  to  recognise 
"the  best  in  poetry." 

No  easy  task,  you  think. 

Yet  the  means  whereby  it  may  be  accomplished  are 
simple. 

First :  A  habit  of  making  the  mind  up  as  to  which 
poem  among  those  we  read  satisfies  us  best ;  not  to  rest 
there,  nor  until  we  know  whether  the  whole  poem  causes 
our  admiration  or  whether  parts  of  it  are  only  accepted 
as  introduction  or  sequel  to  this  or  that  passage  ;  till,  if 
possible,  we  discriminate  the  most  perfect  line,  phrase  or 
rhythm. 

Secondly  :  A  determination  to  become  intimate  only 
with  verse  that  stands  the  test  of  our  most  active  moods, 
instead  of  letting  the  luckless  day,  with  its  relaxed  temper, 
console  itself  with  something  that  we  have  perceived  to 
be  second-rate.  For  in  proportion  as  we  are  loyal  to  our 
taste,  it  will  become  more  difficult  to  please  until  at  last  a 
really  sound  judgment  is  acquired. 

Perhaps  you  will  think  I  speak  too  confidently,  and 
that  good  taste  in  poetry  is  not  within  the  reach  of  every 
honest  endeavour. 

For  a  while  please  imagine  that  you  may  be  mistaken, 
and  admit  that  the  method  of  developing  taste  is  possibly 
both  simple  and  native  to  mankind. 

Difficulty  really  arises  through  the  mind's  preoccupa- 
tions, which  prevent  a  sufficiency  of  consideration  being 
applied  to  aesthetic  experience.     So  manifold  and  strong 

119 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

arc  tlicsc  distractions  that  perhaps  not  more  than  half-a- 
dozen  men  in  a  generation  continue  to  form  their  taste 
through  many  years  together. 

The  probabiHty  of  this  Avill  appear  if  we  roughly  sketch 
the  accidents  which  deter  us  from  persevering,  even 
though  we  leave  out  of  sight  all  those  wJiich  deprive  taste 
of  opportunity,  and  indicate  merely  such  as  induce  bad 
habits  of  mind. 

l\Iany  readers,  supposing  them  to  have  set  out  un- 
prejudiced, may  soon  be  committed  to  praise  or  blame, 
and  then  prove  reluctant  to  revise  and  reject  those  so 
confident  judgments.  This  unwillingness  to  renounce 
infallibility  already  seduces  their  minds  to  continue  a 
higher  strain  of  praise  or  a  more  rigorous  blame  than 
now  appears  due  ;  and  such  disloyalty  spreading  will 
even  blight  the  roots  of  admiration. 

More  modest  souls  are,  on  the  contrar\%  all  ears  for 
others'  opinions  ;  yet  the  verj''  openness  of  their  minds 
may  let  in  such  a  crowd  of  contradictor^'  voices  that  in 
the  din  and  confusion  their  o\m  poor  reason,  unable  to 
hold  its  own,  by  degrees  acquiesces  in  silence. 

Some,  again,  read  verse  so  quickly  or  in  such  quantities 
that  energy  fails  them  for  searching,  sifting  and  listening 
to  their  genuine  impressions  with  ardom*  and  thorough- 
ness :  while  others  will  desist  from  effort  through  mere 
indolence,  and  so  making  fewer  and  fewer  discoveries  of 
excellence,  will  gradually  take  less  interest  in  poetry%  till 
they  no  longer  find  it  worth  while  to  read  any. 

Then  there  are  those  who  conclude  that  great  poets 
produce  nothing  but  great  poetr\%  and  dro\\Ti  their  taste 
in  forced  admiration  for  a  sea  of  failure,  since  success 
crowns  the  efforts  of  poetical  geniuses  far  less  frequently 
than  those  of  skilled  artisans. 

Taste,  in  minds  more  orderly  than  appreciative,  is 
often  suffocated  by  scholarship.  Knowledge  concerning 
man,  period  or  text  absorbs  them,   till  beauty,  whose 

120 


THE  BEST  POETRY 

supposed  presence  was  their  pretext  for  study,  is  habitu- 
ally overlooked  by  their  familiarity. 

Again,  ardent  partisans  will  find  the  poetry  whose 
beauty  most  delights  them  tainted  with  convictions  to 
which  they  are  opposed— heterodox  religious  dogmas,  or 
ultra  Tory  or  ultra  Radical  theories  with  which  they  have 
no  patience  :  or  it  may  even  happen  that  some  true  poet 
shocks  their  respectability  with  what  they  can  honestly 
call  gross  immorality. 

In  all  these  ways,  and  many  more,  men  habitually 
stunt  and  adulterate  their  taste  instead  of  allowing  it  to 
refresh,  refine  and  reform  their  minds,  even  when  they 
have  started  unprejudiced,  and  alert  for  discovery. 

Now  a  still  greater  mass  of  individuals  are  biassed 
against  poetry  from  the  start.  Its  mere  unfamiliarity 
appals  them.  Like  old-fashioned  servants,  they  keep 
their  lives  consistently  downstairs  in  regard  to  it. 
Whether  vice  or  virtue,  it  is  not  for  the  likes  of 
them. 

Their  bolder  brothers  are  ashamed  to  associate  so 
fantastic  a  mode  of  speech  with  business-like  cogitations. 
Rhyme  is  all  very  well  in  a  music  hall  song  ;  but  what  an 
inconceivable  nuisance  to  a  man  who  wishes  to  be  undis- 
tracted  !  And  even  when  not  so  alienated  by  ignorance, 
or  the  inhuman  circumstances  of  their  lives,  they  may 
alone  be  impressionable  through  some  enthusiasm,  and 
thus  become  exclusive  readers  of  imperialistic  or  socialistic 
verse  because  they  are  aglow  with  sympathy  for  the 
poet's  ideas,  and  remain  immovable  by  similar  or  superior 
beauties  not  so  associated. 

In  this  way  many  folk  enjoy  hymns  to  whom  all  other 
poetry  is  distasteful,  or  are  ravished  by  limericks  who 
could  not  be  tempted  to  open  a  Golden  Treasury. 

Again  the  kindling  eloquence  of  some  critic,  the  voice 
and  manner  of  some  reader,  cause  their  taste  to  be  passion- 
ately  espoused  :     when   the   same   ardent   hero-worship 

121 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

Avhicli  transplants  it  may  prove  tlic  enemy  of  its  furtlicr 
gro^^•th.  For  disciplcsliip  will  often  take  a  perverse  pride 
in  refusing  to  admire  and  love,  except  where  it  has  the 
warrant  of  its  master's  actual  example. 

All  these  are  kinds  of  initial  bigotries  which  may  easily 
be  so  ingrained  in  a  person  of  fourteen  that  hardly  any 
upheaval  can  be  conceived  which  should  lay  bare  the 
foimdations  of  their  humanity  to  this  most  congenial  of 
influences,  the  power  of  the  best  poetry. 

A  third  class  are  those  who  are  meanly  corrupt ;  en- 
dowed with  a  little  taste,  they  have  employed  it  on 
personal  or  social  ends,  instead  of  desiring  to  be  employed 
by  it  in  the  discovery  of  excellence.  They  have  sought 
sentimental  consolations  or  a  pick-me-up  for  enthusiasm, 
and  used  and  abused  this  nectar  as  others  use  and  abuse 
alcohol. 

Or  by  its  means  they  have  tried  to  shine  in  society,  to 
pass  for  cultured  people  cheaply.  Or  they  have  learned 
to  understand  and  theorise  about  it  in  order  to  teach  in  a 
school  or  give  an  extension  lecture  ;  or,  through  the  weak- 
ness of  all  their  other  tastes,  have  drifted  into  literary 
criticism  or  a  professorship  at  a  university  by  way  of 
excusing  their  existence. 

In  all  these  w^ays  taste  may  be  harnessed  to  a  market 
cart,  and  trot  backwards  and  forwards  on  the  highway, 
respected  among  other  respectable  trades,  but  stunted, 
cowed  and  gelded. 

Now,  suppose  that  all  these  dangers  have  been  avoided 
— and  there  are  few  walks  of  life  not  notably  infested  by 
one  or  another  of  them — right  across  the  road  of  progress 
in  good  taste  there  then  lies  waiting  a  more  terrible  ogre, 
w'ho  enslaves  great  geniuses  and  starves  minds  potentially 
as  rich  as  the  Indies.  He  is  that  species  of  vanity  which 
admires  what  is  impertinent  or  accidental  because  it  is  a 
man's  own.  All  satisfaction  with  mere  cleverness,  mere 
daintiness,  mere  subtlety,  oddity,  bravado,  bluffness,  etc., 

122 


THE  BEST  POETRY 

with  which  fine  designs  have  been  teased  or  disfigured  is 
wound  of  his  dealing.  No  Hterature  has  he  scarred  more 
deeply  than  our  English.  Shakespeare  himself  could  not 
defend  the  grandest  poems  ever  conceived  against  his 
barbarity. 

"  '  Be  true  to  your  taste,'  this  mocking  giant  cries, 
'  your  own  taste,  not  any  one  else's.  Be  not  overborne  by 
tradition  or  corrupted  by  fashion.  Dare  on  your  own 
account  and  let  the  ideal  take  care  of  itself.  What  ! 
Correct  nature,  correct  yourself !  Amazing  nonsense  ! 
You  are  what  you  are  ;  Nature  is  what  it  is.  That  is  all 
we  want  to  know  ;  all  we  can  admire." 

Deluded  by  this  advocate  of  a  specious  loyalty  to  taste, 
men  tie  themselves  to  first  thoughts  and  raw  emotions  as 
though  these  were  more  essentially  their  own  than  thoughts 
cleared  and  polished  by  reflection,  or  emotion  chastened 
by  considerate  expression.  They  will  relinquish  study  in 
dread  of  tainting  their  originality,  checking  their  verve,  or 
confusing  their  impressions.  "  I  want  to  put  down  just 
what  I  think,  what  I  feel,  nothing  more,  nothing  less," 
they  plead.  Alas  !  had  you  taken  up  with  that  theory  in 
infancy  you  would  be  a  baby  still. 

A  thriving  taste  is  like  a  seedling,  intensely  itself,  but 
determined  to  be  a  tree.  Its  possessor  must  be  loyal  to 
the  laws  of  its  growth  and  provide  it  with  food,  light,  air. 
It  does  not  desire  instant  petrifaction  to  preserve  it  from 
change  and  inconsistency,  but  is  eager  to  embrace  and 
attack  the  unknown  in  order  to  obtain  new  impressions,  to 
arrange  and  recompose  with  its  own.  And  as  a  creator 
who  owns  such  a  taste  is  constantly  recasting,  reconsider- 
ing and  correcting  his  work,  and  eschews  both  haste  and 
lethargy,  so  an  appreciator,  whose  taste  lives,  strives  after 
larger  comprehension  by  watching  those  whom  he  sur- 
mises may  possibly  possess  such  ;  and  by  sifting  and 

123 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

scarcliinpf  liis  present  judgments  he  will  be  constantly  re- 
construeting  hierarchies  of  merit,  giving  marks,  100  for 
Shakespeare's  best  sonnet,  a  duck's  cgfr  for  his  worst. 

jNIr  Lascelles  Abercrombic  lately  published  The  Sale  of 
St  Thomas,  a  fine  poem.  He  must  take  up  at  least  half-a- 
dozen  poets  and  come  very  near  the  top  of  the  class.  Yet, 
if  in  The  Emblems  of  Love,  which  has  appeared  since  he 
seems  to  us  to  have  done  but  little  to  secure  that  pre- 
eminence, this  also  should  be  promptly  admitted. 

In  a  definite  number  of  stanzas  Mr  Herbert  Trench's 
fine  gift  of  a  musical  style  becomes  one  with  felicity  of 
conception.  It  is  worth  while  to  know  it,  and  to  be 
jealous  over  a  single  unit  more  or  less.  This  ceaseless 
movement  and  reorganisation  of  a  man's  judgment  is  a 
condition  of  the  growth  of  taste,  and  enables  him  to  look 
back  on  bygone  admirations  with  the  conviction  that 
those  of  to-day  are  stronger,  more  definite  and  yield  him 
purer  delight. 

But  improviser  and  impressionist  accept  just  what 
happens  to  be  there,  and,  while  they  try  to  record  it  un- 
altered by  reason  or  tendency,  it  dwindles  for  lack  of  the 
nourishment  that  a  puipose  and  reconsideration  would 
have  given  it.  Impressionism  should  not  be  regarded  as 
the  practice  of  a  school  of  painters  ;  this  bad  habit  is  as 
old  as  Jubal,  the  father  of  all  such  as  handle  the  hai"p  and 
organ.  Even  the  modern  avowed  and  vainglorious  im- 
pressionism impoverished  the  art  not  only  of  AVliistler, 
but  that  of  Meredith  ;  nay,  it  had  infected  even  such  a 
genius  as  Browning,  and  all  but  justifies  what  Mr  San- 
tayana,  perhaps  the  finest  literary  critic  alive,  says  of 
him  : 

"  Now  it  is  in  the  conception  of  things'  \mdamental  and 
ultimate  that  Browning  is  weak,  he  is  strong  in  the  con- 
ception of  things  immediate.  The  pulse  of  emotion,  the 
bobbing  up  of  thought,  the  streaming  of  reverie — these  he 
124 


THE  BEST  POETRY 

can  note  down  with  picturesque  force  or  imagine  with 
admirable  fecundity.  Yet  the  limits  of  such  excellence 
are  narrow.  For  no  man  can  safely  go  far  without  the 
guidance  of  reason.  His  long  poems  have  no  structure. 
.  .  .  Even  his  short  poems  have  no  completeness,  no  lim- 
pidity. .  .  .  What  is  admirable  in  them  is  the  pregnancy 
of  phrase,  vividness  of  passion  and  sentiment,  heaped-up 
scraps  of  observation,  occasional  flashes  of  light,  occasional 
beauties  of  versification,  all  like — 

'  The  quick  sharp  scratch 
And  blue  spurt  of  a  lighted  match.' 

There  is  never  anything  largely  composed  in  the  spirit  of 
pure  beauty,  nothing  devotedly  finished,  nothing  simple 
and  truly  just."  ^ 

Rossetti  called  a  sonnet  "  a  moment's  monument." 
Fortunately  he  did  not  mean  all  he  might  have  meant 
by  it,  and  his  own  sonnets  were  the  result  of  long  hours 
of  meditation,  and  recast  again  and  again.  His  phrase, 
however,  epitomises  this  theoiy  ;  a  moment,  not  a  choice 
moment,  but  any  single  moment,  is  considered  as  worthy 
of  an  eternal  monument.  With  this  end  in  view  the  writer 
is  more  fortunate  than  the  artist.  He  may  record  minute 
after  minute  just  what  words  come  into  his  head,  till  at 
last  none  come  and  his  work  is  finished.  And  apprecia- 
tion for  such  work  is  acquired  in  the  same  manner,  by 
stupefying  reason  and  yielding  oneself,  like  the  smoker  of 
opium,  to  a  stream  of  suggestions. 

The  out-and-out  impressionist  would  be  like  a  man  who 
should  strip  his  clothes  off  in  order  to  prove  that  his 
honesty  needed  no  disguise,  and,  when  he  was  naked,  must 
be  clapped  int  an  asylum  because  he  had  lost  his  wits. 
Instead  of  accumulating  resources,  the  improviser  or  im- 
pressionist whittles  them  away  ;  though  he  be  rich  at  the 

^Poetry  and  Religion,  "The  Poetry  of  Barbarism,"  p.  20  8. 

125 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

outstart,  lie  will  always  be  poorer  in  the  end.  This  pro- 
cess has  a  widespread  faseination  even  in  practical  life,  as 
the  bankruptcy  courts  attest.  Running  downhill  begets 
its  proper  exhilaration,  one  moves  faster  and  faster  ;  the 
invigoration  derived  from  ascending  must  maintain  itself 
in  spite  of  decreasing  speed. 

Now  not  only  do  the  victims  of  these  many  maladies  of 
taste  which  I  have  enumerated  miss  sound  health,  but,  by 
implacable  necessity,  they  become  passively  or  actively, 
here  or  there,  enemies  and  maltreaters  of  poetry,  w4io 
resist  and  persecute  her  best. 

Why  should  we  then  wonder  at  the  ups  and  downs  of 
literary'  histon-,  the  blindness  of  contemporaries,  the  long- 
continued  bigotiy  of  worthless  fashions,  or  at  the  lives 
and  misfortunes  of  poets  ? 

Poetry,  as  distinguished  from  prose,  is  formally 
rhythmic  ;  and  the  reason  why  it  is  so,  is  that  a  majority 
of  the  finest  mentalities  have  considered  formal  rhythms 
capable  of  greater  beautj^  Apart  from  their  beauty,  they 
are  simply  inconvenient. 

Browning  compares  the  ravishing  depth  and  wamith  of 
colour,  which  Keats  discovered  the  secret  of,  to  Tyrian 
purple,  and  says  that  he  flooded  the  literary  market  an  ith — 

"  Enough  to  furnish  Solomon 
Such  hangings  for  his  cedar-house. 
That,  Avhen  gold-robed  he  took  the  throne 
In  that  abyss  of  blue,  the  Spouse 
Might  swear  his  presence  shone 

Most  like  the  centre-spike  of  gold 
Which  burns  deep  in  the  blue-bell's  womb, 
What  time,  with  ardours  manifold. 
The  bee  goes  singing  to  her  groom. 
Drunken  and  over- bold." 

— stanzas  whose  beauty  is  worthy  to  rank  with  Keats's 
own  work,  and  which  add  to  his  luxurious  rielmess  of 

126 


THE  BEST  POETRY 

diction  a  directness  and  energy  of  movement  such  as  he 
has  left  no  example  of. 
But  Browning  continues  : 

"  And|there's  the  extract,  flasked  and  fine 
And  priced  and  saleable  at  last ! 
And  Hobbs,  Nobbs,  Stokes  and  Nokes  combine 
To  paint  the  future  from  the  past, 
Put  blue  into  their  line. 

Hobbs  hints  blue,  — straight  he  turtle  eats  : 
Nobbs  prints  blue,  — claret  crowns  his  cup  : 
Nokes  outdares  Stokes  in  azure  feats,  — 
Both  gorge.     Who  fished  the  murex  up  ? 
What  porridge  had  John  Keats  ?  "  ^ 

— stanzas  in  which  the  artificial  form  of  verse  seems 
merely  to  incommode  that  vigour  and  directness,  so 
eminently  characteristic  of  Browning,  both  when  he 
writes  poetry  and  when  he  distorts  prose  into  its  sem- 
blance and  caricature. 

Take  another  instance  of  this  abuse,  from  Wordsworth  : 

"  Yes,  it  was  the  mountain  echo, 
Solitary,  clear,  profound, 
Answering  to  the  shouting  cuckoo 
Giving  to  her  sound  for  sound. 

Unsolicited  reply 

To  a  babbling  wanderer  sent  ; 

Like  her  ordinary  cry 

Like — but  oh,  how  different !  " 

These  two  stanzas  enchant  the  ear,  and  kindle  the  mind 
to  joyous  receptiveness.  But  alas  !  the  poet  continues 
much  as  the  genius  of  the  Salvation  Army  adapts  the 
tune  of  a  successful  music  hall  song  to  other  words. 

"  Hears  not  also  mortal  life  ? 
Hear  not  we  unthinking  creatures 
Slaves  of  folly,  love,  and  strife  — 
Voices  of  two  different  natures  ? 

^Browning's  Works,  "Popularity,"  vol.  vi.,  p.  192. 

127 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

Have  not  \vc  too  ? — yes,  wc  have 
Answers,  and  wc  know  not  whence  ; 
Echoes  from  beyond  the  grave 
Recognised  intelligence  ! 

Often  as  thy  inward  ear 
Catches  such  rebounds,  beware  !  — 
Listen,  ponder,  hold  them  dear  ; 
For  of  God, — of  God  they  are."  ^ 

And  one  has  almost  forgotten  that  he  was  inspired 
when  he  set  out.  The  Muse  was  responsible  for  those 
first  delightful  stanzas  ;  Mr  Wordsworth,  philosophical 
member  of  the  Church  of  England,  for  the  three  last, 
commenda])le  in  many  ways  but  not  as  poetry,  since  all 
they  say  might  have  been  expressed  as  well  or  even  better 
in  prose. 

Emerson  says  : 

"  The  thought,  the  happy  image,  which  expressed  it, 
and  which  was  a  true  experience  to  the  poet,  recurs  to  the 
mind,  and  sends  me  back  in  search  of  the  book.  And  I 
wish  that  the  poet  should  foresee  this  habit  of  readers, 
and  omit  all  but  important  passages.  Shakespeare  is 
made  up  of  important  passages,  like  Damascus  steel 
made  up  of  old  nails."  ^ 

It  would  have  been  much  better  if  Wordsw^orth  had 
published  his  two  stanzas  and  Browning  his  two,  and 
omitted  the  rest  of  their  poems.     Why  did  they  not  ? 

Emerson  shall  tell  us  : 

"  Great  design  belongs  to  a  poem  and  is  better  than  any 
skill  of  execution, — but  how  rare  !  I  find  it  in  the  poems 
of  Wordsworth,  Laodamia  and  the  Ode  to  Dion,  and  the 
plan  of  The  Recluse.     We  w^ant  design,  and  do  not  forgive 

^  Poems  of  the  Imagination,  xxix. 

^Letters  and  Social  Aims,  "Poetry  and  Imagination,"  p.  152. 

128 


THE  BEST  POETRY 

the  bards  if  they  have  only  the  art  of  enamelhng.     We 
want  an  architect  and  they  bring  us  an  upholsterer."  ^ 

It  is  this  demand  that  makes  the  poet  shy  of  proffering 
his  fragment  of  pure  gold,  and  eggs  him  on  to  work  it  into 
a  statue  by  adding  clay,  iron,  or  anything  else  which  he 
has  handy. 

That  ode  on  Dion,  which  Emerson  mentions,  set  out  to 
be  the  finest  ode  in  our  language,  and  though  less  com- 
plete, less  successful  than  several  of  Keats 's,  it  still  retains 
some  superiority  over  them.  As  a  magical  treatment  of 
the  tragedy  of  heroism,  it  stands  beside  Milton's  Samson 
Agonistes,  and  the  scene  of  the  quarrel  between  Brutus 
and  Cassius  in  Julius  Ccesar.  That  scene  Nietzsche 
considered  the  grandest  in  all  Shakespeare,  on  account 
of  the  importance  and  dignity  of  its  theme ;  and  the 
ode  on  Dion  may  claim  a  similar  advantage  among 
other  odes. 

Wordsworth's  subject  was  not  Dion's  tragedy,  as  told 
by  Plutarch,  but  his  own  sense  of  its  import :  yet  he 
seems  to  have  felt  uneasy  at  not  telling  the  story,  and 
breaks  off  to  paint  a  preliminary  scene  ;  then  the  might 
of  his  true  subject  seizes  him  again,  and  he  rushes  on  to 
his  goal,  the  events  that  carry  the  moral.  Now  this 
moral  is  the  most  important  inference  to  be  dra%\Ti  from 
experience,  and  raises  the  question  about  which  men  will 
contend  longest. 

The  facts  necessaiy  for  the  comprehension  of  the  poem, 
but  not  easily  to  be  deduced  from  reading  it,  are  that  Dion 
was  a  finely  gifted  man  and  Plato's  disciple ;  had  been 
unjustly  exiled,  and  on  his  return,  coming  to  the  head  of 
affairs,  intended  to  use  power  ideally,  yet  permitted  the 
opponent  of  his  government  to  be  illegally  put  to  death  ; 
was  reproached  for  this  in  a  vision,  and  soon  after  fell  a 
victim  to  an  assassin's  knife. 

^  Letters  and  Social  Aims,  "Poetry  and  Imagination,"  p.  153. 
1  129 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

In  reading,  I  will  omit  the  division  of  clay  ;  you  can  all 
decide  whether  I  am  justified  in  so  doing  when  you  read 
the  poem  for  yovn'sclves  at  your  leisure. 

The  beauty  of  Dion's  character  and  its  relation  to  that 
of  Plato  are  first  compared  to  a  white  swan  sailing  in  the 
light  of  the  moon. 

■'  Fair  is  the  swan,  whose  majesty,  prevailing 
O'er  breezeless  water,  on  Locarno's  lake, 
Bears  him  on  while  proudly  sailing 
He  leaves  behind  a  moon-illumined  wake  : 
Behold  !  the  mantling  spirit  of  reserve 
Fashions  his  neck  into  a  goodly  curve  ; 
An  arch  thrown  back  between  luxuriant  wings 
Of  whitest  garniture,  like  fir-tree  boughs 
To  which,  on  some  unruffled  inorning.  clings 
A  flaky  weight  of  winter's  purest  snows  ! 
— Behold  !  — as  with  a  gushing  impulse  heaves 
That  downy  prow,  and  softly  cleaves 
The  mirror  of  the  crystal  flood. 
Vanish  inverted  hill,  and  shadowy  wood. 
And  pendent  rocks,  where'er,  in  gliding  state, 
Winds  the  mute  Creature  without  visible  mate 
Or  rival,  save  the  Queen  of  night 
Showering  down  a  silver  light, 
From  heaven,  upon  her  chosen  favomite  ! 

So  pure,  so  bright,  so  fitted  to  embrace, 

Where'er  he  turned,  a  natural  grace 

Of  haughtiness  without  pretence. 

And  to  unfold  a  still  magnificence, 

Was  princely  Dion,  in  the  power 

And  beauty  of  his  happier  hour. 

Nor  less  the  homage  that  was  seen  to  wait 

On  Dion's  virtues,  when  the  lunar  beam 

Of  Plato's  genius,  from  its  lofty  sphere 

Fell  round  him  in  the  grove  of  Academe, 

Softening  their  inbred  dignity  austere — 

That  he,  not  too  elate 

With  self-sufficing  solitude,  | 

But  with  majestic  lowliness  endued, 

130 


THE  BEST  POETRY 

Might  in  the  universal  bosom  reign, 
And  from  affectionate  observance  gain 
Help,  under  every  change  of  adverse  fate. 


Mourn,  hills  and  gToves  of  Attica  !   and  mourn 

Illisus,  bending  o'er  thy  classic  urn  ! 

Mourn,  and  lament  for  him  whose  spirit  dreads 

Your  once  sweet  memory,  studious  walks  and  shades  ! 

For  him  who  to  divinity  aspired. 

Not  on  the  breath  of  popular  applause, 

But  through  dependence  on  the  sacred  laws 

Framed  in  the  schools  where  Wisdom  dM'elt  retired, 

Intent  to  trace  the  ideal  path  of  right 

(More  fair  than  heaven's  broad  causeway  paved  with 

stars) 
Which  Dion  learned  to  measure  with  delight ; — 
Bvit  he  hath  overleaped  the  eternal  bars  ; 
And,  following  guides  whose  craft  holds  no  consent 
With  aught  that  breathes  the  ethereal  element. 
Hath  stained  the  robes  of  civil  power  with  blood, 
Unjustly  shed,  though  for  the  public  good. 
Whence  doubts  that  came  too  late,  and  wishes  vain, 
Hollow  excuses,  and  triumphant  pain  ; 
And  oft  his  cogitations  sink  as  low 
As,  through  the  abysses  of  a  joyless  heart, 
The  heaviest  plummet  of  despair  can  go — 
But  whence  that  sudden  check  ?   that  fearful  start ! 
He  hears  an  uncouth  sound — 
Anon  his  lifted  eyes 

Saw.  at  a  long-drawn  gallery's  dusky  bound, 
A  shape  of  more  than  mortal  size 
And  hideous  aspect,  stalking  round  and  round  ! 
A  woman's  garb  the  Phantom  wore, 
And  fiercely  swept  the  marble  floor, — 
Like  Auster  whirling  to  and  fro 
His  force  on  Caspian  foam  to  try ; 
Or  Boreas  when  he  scours  the  snow 
That  skins  the  plains  of  Thessaly, 
Or  when  aloft  on  Maenalus  he  stops 
His  flight,  'mid  eddying  pine-tree  tops  ! 

131 


SO^rK  SOT.DIER  POETS 

So,  hut  from  toil  less  sign  of  profit  reaping, 
The  sullen  Speetrc  to  her  purpose  bowed, 
Sweeping  —vehemently  sweeping — 
No  pause  admitted,  no  design  avowed  ! 
'  Avaunt,  incxplieable  Guest ! — avaunt,' 
Exclaimed  tlie  Chieftain — 'Let  me  rather  see 
The  eoronal  that  coiling  vipers  make  ; 
The  torch  that  flames  with  many  a  lurid  flake. 
And  the  long  train  of  doleful  pageantry 
Which  they  behold,  whom  vengeful  Furies  haunt ; 
Who,  while  they  struggle  from  the  scourge  to  flee, 
Move  where  the  blasted  soil  is  not  unworn. 
And,    in    their    anguish,    bear    what    other    minds    have 
born ! ' 


But  Shapes  that  come  not  at  an  earthly  call. 

Will  not  depart  when  mortal  voices  bid  ; 

Lords  of  the  visionary  eye  whose  lid, 

Once  raised,  remains  aghast,  and  will  not  fall ! 

Ye  Gods,  thought  He,  that  servile  implement 

Obeys  a  mystical  intent ! 

Your  minister  would  brush  away 

The  spots  that  to  my  soul  adhere  ; 

But  should  she  labour  night  and  day, 

They  will  not,  cannot  disappear  ; 

Whence  angry  perturbations,  ^ — and  that  look 

Which  no  philosophy  can  brook  ! 

Ill-fated  chief !  there  are  whose  hopes  are  built 

Upon  the  ruins  of  thy  glorious  name  ; 

Who,  through  the  portal  of  one  moment's  guilt, 

Pursue  thee  with  their  deadly  aim  ! 

O  matchless  perfidy  !   portentous  lust 

Of  monstrous  crime  !  — -that  horror-striking  blade, 

Drawn  in  defiance  of  the  Gods,  hath  laid 

The  noble  Syracusan  low  in  dust  ! 

Shudder 'd  the  walls — the  marble  city  wept  — 

And  sylvan  places  heaved  a  pensive  sigh  ; 

But  in  the  calm  peace  the  appointed  Victim  slept. 

As  he  had  fallen  in  magnanimity  ; 

132 


THE  BEST  POETRY 

Of  spirit  too  capacious  to  require 

That  Destiny  her  course  should  change  ;  too  just 

To  his  own  native  greatness  to  desire 

That  wretched  boon,  days  lengthened  by  mistrust. 

So  were  the  hopeless  troubles,  that  involved 

The  soul  of  Dion,  instantly  dissolved. 

Released  from  life  and  cares  of  princely  state, 

He  left  this  moral  grafted  on  his  Fate  : 

'  Him  only  pleasure  leads,  and  peace  attends, 

Him,  only  him,  the  shield  of  Jove  defends 

Whose  means  are  fair  and  spotless  as  his  ends.'  "  ^ 

What  magnificent  language  and  rhythm  !  Neverthe- 
less this  poem,  compared  with  the  Ode  on  the  Intimations 
of  Immortality,  may  be  classed  as  unknown  ;  yet  it  con- 
tains more  and  better  poetry. 

Unfortunately  the  last  three  lines,  if  not  clay,  are  not 
pure  gold  ;  for  it  is  not  true  that  pleasure  leads  and  peace 
attends,  or  that  the  shield  of  Jove  defends  the  clean- 
handed hero,  and  we  notice  something  trite  in  the  enuncia- 
tion of  the  thought.  Wordsworth  should  have  found  it 
obviously  false,  since  he  accepted  Jesus  of  Nazareth  as  the 
perfect  t^'pe.  Yet,  means  fair  and  spotless  as  the  end 
proposed  are  ideal  requirements  both  in  art  and  heroism. 
The  contention  that  this  scrupulousness,  the  ideal  beauty 
of  which  is  freely  recognised,  should  control  business, 
is  probably  the  hardest  bone  of  contention  with  which 
humanity  is  provided — the  one  about  which  every  com- 
promise of  necessit}^  begs  the  question. 

Brutus,  Dion  and  Samson  (who  for  Milton  represented 
Cromwell)  are  such  tragic  figures  because  the  beauty  of 
their  heroism  became  tarnished  and  ended  in  failure. 

For  my  fault-finding  with  Wordsworth  I  hope  you  will 
think  I  have  made  amends  ;  I  would  fain  do  as  much  for 
Browning,  but  time  and  capacity  fail  me  for  reading  his 
magnificent  Artemis  Prologizes,  perhaps  the  most  splendid 

1  Poems  of  the  Imagination,  xxxii. 

183 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

120  lines  ol"  l)lank  verse  in  English.     I  will  read  one  of  his 
successful  lyrics  instead. 

BroAvning  imagines  a  page-boy  in  love  Avith  a  queen, 
and,  while  tending  her  hounds  and  hawks,  complaining 
of  this  hopeless  passion  and  overheard  by  her. 

"  Give  her  but  a  least  excuse  to  love  me  ! 
When  — where — 

How — can  this  arm  establish  her  above  me, 
If  fortune  fixed  her  as  my  lady  there, 
There  already,  to  eternally  reprove  me  ? 
('  Hist !  '^ — ^said  Kate  the  Queen  ; 
But  '  oh  !  '■ — ^cricd  the  maiden,  binding  her  tresses, 
'  'Tis  only  a  page  that  carols  unseen, 
Crumbling  your  hounds  their  messes  !  ') 

Is  she  wronged  ?  — To  the  rescue  of  her  honour, 

My  heart  ! 

Is  she  poor  ?  — What  costs  it  to  be  styled  a  donor  ? 

Merely  an  earth  to  cleave,  a  sea  to  part  ? 

But  that  fortune  should  have  thrust  all  this  upon  her  ! 

('  Nay,  list ! ' — bade  Kate  the  Queen  ; 

And  still  cried  the  maiden  binding  her  tresses, 

'  'Tis  only  a  page  that  carols  unseen. 

Fitting  your  hawks  their  jesses  ! ')  "  ^ 

The  turn  of  rhythm  on  "when — where — how"  is  so 
felicitous  that  it  seems  madness  for  a  poet  to  dream  of 
adding  another  stanza  which,  as  coming  second,  should 
be  more  perfect. 

Yet  when  we  read — 

"  Is  she  wronged  ? — ^To  the  rescue  of  her  honour. 
My  heart  ! 
Is  she  poor  ? — What  costs  it  to  be  styled  a  donor  ?  " — 

we  breathe  free,  and  glory  in  his  triumph. 

Yet  this  song  is  not  in  the  Oxford  Book  of  English  Verse, 
where  under  Browning's  name  several  obviously  inferior 
things  appear. 

^  Pippa  Passes^  Part  11. 
134 


THE  BEST  POETRY 

Ben  Jonson,  like  Browning,  produced  a  mass  of  work 
pregnant  with  intelligence,  but  which  rarely  became  pure 
poetiy.  However,  he,  like  Browning,  yields  a  handful 
of  perfect  things.     I  will  read  one  : 

"  See  the  chariot  at  hand  here  of  Love, 
Wherein  my  lady  rideth  ! 
Each  that  draws  is  a  swan  or  a  dove, 
And  well  the  car  Love  guideth. 
As  she  goes,  all  hearts  do  duty 
Unto  her  beauty 

And,  enamoured,  do  wish,  so  they  might 
But  enjoy  such  a  sight. 
That  they  still  were  to  run  by  her  side 
Through  swords,  through  seas,  whither  she  would  ride. 

Do  but  look  on  her  eyes,  they  do  light 

All  that  Love's  world  compriseth  ! 

Do  but  look  on  her  hair,  it  is  bright 

As  Love's  star  when  it  riseth  ! 

Do  but  mark,  her  forehead's  smoother 

Than  words  that  soothe  her  ! 

And  from  her  arched  brows,  such  a  grace 

Sheds  itself  through  the  face, 

As  alone  there  triumphs  to  the  life 

All  the  gain,  all  the  good,  of  the  elements'  strife. 

Have  you  seen  but  a  bright  lily  grow. 

Before  rude  hands  have  touched  it  ? 

Have  you  marked  but  the  fall  of  the  snow 

Before  the  soil  hath  smutched  it  ? 

Have  you  felt  the  wool  of  beaver  ? 

Or  swan's  down  ever  ? 

Or  have  smelt  o'  the  bud  o'  the  brier  ? 

Or  the  nard  in  the  fire  ? 

Or  have  tasted  the  bag  of  the  bee  ? 

O  so  white  !   O  so  soft !   O  so  sweet  is  she  !  "  ^ 

Palgrave  failed  to  observe  the  marvellous  perfection 
of  this  song.     It  is  not  in  his  Golden  Treasury,  which  yet 

^  Underwoods,  iv. 

135 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

contains  so  nmcli  poor  stuff.     It  is  by  such  felicities  as 
the  climax — 

"  O  so  white  !  O  so  soft !  O  so  sweet  is  she  !  " — 

that  the  form  of  evei-}'  lyric  should  be  a  discovery. 

The  sui-j)risc  of  this  kind  that  seems  to  have  fallen  most 
directly  out  of  heaven  is  the  line — 

"  Sad  true  lover  never  find  my  grave  "  — 

from  the  dirge  in  Twelfth  Night. 

"  Come  away,  come  away,  death, 
And  in  sad  cypress  let  me  be  laid. 
Fly  away,  fly  away,  breath  ; 
I  am  slain  by  a  fair  cruel  maid. 
j\Iy  shroud  of  white,  stuck  all  with  }'ew, 
Oh,  prepare  it ! 

]\Iy  part  of  death,  no  one  so  true 
Did  share  it. 

Not  a  flower,  not  a  flower  sweet. 

On  my  black  coffni  let  there  be  strown  ; 

Not  a  friend,  not  a  friend  greet 

My  poor  corpse,  where  my  bones  shall  be  thrown  : 

A  thousand  thousand  sighs  to  save 

Lay  me,  Oh,  where 

Sad  true  lover  never  find  my  grave 

To  weep  there  !  " 

The  difficulty  of  accounting  for  the  scansion  of  that 
disquieted  Shakespearean  editors  for  upwards  of  two 
hundred  j-ears,  till  at  last  it  was  observed  that  the 
irregularity  was  exceedingly  beautiful.  So  easily  is  the 
goal  of  a?sthetic  research  obscured  even  for  men  as  in- 
telligent as  Pope  or  Capel. 

Now,  for  fear  of  enervating  our  taste  by  an  over-constant 
effort  to  appreciate  what  is  perfect,  let  us  compare  a 
stanza  from  the  great  lyric  in  IMatthew  Arnold's  Emjjedocles, 
and  one  from  Bro^^Tling's  much- vaunted  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra, 
with  one  from  Shelley's  To  a  Skylark. 

186 


THE  BEST  POETRY 

"  In  vain  our  pent  wills  fret, 
And  would  the  world  subdue  ; 
Limits  we  did  not  set 
Condition  all  we  do  ; 
Born  into  life  we  are,  and  life  must  be  our  mould." 

Undoubtedly  that  is  a  true  thought,  and  expressed -with 
more  cogency  and  clearness  than — 

"  Grow  old  along  with  me  1 
The  best  is  yet  to  be, 

The  last  of  life  for  which  the  first  was  made  : 
Our  times  are  in  His  hand 
Who  saith,  '  A  whole  I  planned. 
Youth  shows  but  half ;  trust  God  ;  see  all  nor  be  afraid  ! '  " 

It  is  obviously  more  often  than  not  impossible  to  obey 
the  command  to  grow  old  along  with  any  genial  old  gentle- 
man ;  it  is  often,  also,  untrue  that  the  best  is  yet  to  be. 
No  doubt  it  would  be  very  consoling  if  experience  bore 
out  the  old  Rabbi ;  but  it  does  not. 

Now  listen  to  Shelley,  for  the  desired,  the  enchanting, 
the  ever-acceptable  accent  which  creates  beauty  and  joy 
even  out  of  depression  : 

"  We  look  before  and  after 
And  pine  for  what  is  not : 
Our  sincerest  laughter 
With  some  pain  is  fraught ; 
Our  sweetest  songs  are  those  that  tell  of  saddest  thought." 

True.  To  a  Skylark  treats  continually  of  lovely  and 
agreeable  things,  but  so  does  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra  ;  he  com- 
pares passionate  youth  with  serene  old  age,  and,  refurbish- 
ing the  hackneyed  image  of  the  potter  and  the  clay, 
substitutes  for  the  nondescript  "  vessel "  a  Grecian  urn. 
Yet  with  all  these  opportunities  he  never  turns  a  single 
stanza  so  beautiful  as  the  most  abstract  of  Shelley's. 

The  fact  is.  Browning  represents  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra  as  a 
prosperous  old  man  enjoying  a  stately  decline,  who  allows 

187 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

his  after-dinner  optimism  to  get  the  better  of  his  o])Scrva- 
tion  and  experience.  He  is  moved  by  thouglit,  Ijut  less 
conscious  of  its  truth  or  beauty  than  of  its  supposed 
efhcacy  for  cheering,  that  is  bamboozhng :  and  tliis 
pui-pose  of  his  cannot  beget  afflatus  sufficient  to  rise  to  a 
fine  fonii  and  movement,  so  his  utterance  is  outclassed  not 
only  by  Sliellcy's,  which  is  beautiful,  but  by  Arnold's, 
which,  though  plain,  is  sincere. 

I  mentioned  that  some  of  the  best  poetry  has  been 
honestly  charged  with  immorality.  Such  accusations  are 
usually  made  by  people  who  regard  the  fact  that  poets 
can  and  often  do  preach  excellent  sermons  as  the  only 
excuse  for  verse.  Now  to  elucidate  this  difficulty  we 
must  conceive  of  English  morality  as  something  dependent 
on  the  customs  and  habits  of  the  English,  not  as  an 
absolute  criterion  of  worth.  In  practical  life  it  is  a  mis- 
take to  run  counter  to  one's  neighbours  without  a 
weighty  reason  without  being  prepared  to  suffer  as  a 
consequence. 

But  in  the  realm  of  contemplation,  whither  poetry 
should  lift  us,  morality,  instead  of  being  established,  is  a 
project. 

There,  if  it  is  not  to  prove  futile,  neither  deed  nor  doer 
must  be  left  unconsidered,  but  the  whole  reality  must  be 
harmoniously  reviewed.  For  this  reason  we  should  wel- 
come all  who  can  give  fine  literary  form  to  any  accident, 
however  inconvenient  that  accident  may  be  in  a  mun- 
dane sphere.  An  unpalatable  truth  thvis  becomes 
associated  with  beauty — an  object  for  contemplation, 
yielding  refreshment  and  recreation. 

"It  is  all  very  well  in  a  book,"  as  people  say  of  ex- 
travagant behaviour,  implying  that  in  practice  it  is  less 
pardonable  ;  and  what  they  say  is  quite  true.  Only 
their  tone  of  voice  may  be  disparaging  to  literature  and 
betray  the  penury  of  their  taste. 

A  consequence  of  this  more  comprehensive  horizon 
138 


THE  BEST  POETRY 

which  poetiy  demands  is  that  a  poem  must  not  only 
be  enthralhng  by  beauty  and  intensity,  but,  if  it  be  of 
any  length,  by  its  interest. 

Rossetti  rightly  queried  whether  a  long  poem  ought 
not  to  be  as  absorbing  as  a  novel.  It  ought.  A  novel 
need  only  fail  of  being  a  poem  by  that  degree  of  beauty 
which  formal  rhythms  have  over  informal.  Most  novels 
do  fail  in  many  other  ways,  but  many  long  poems  fail  just 
where  good  novels  succeed.  It  is  in  vital  interest  that 
Shakespeare's  Macbeth,  Lear,  Hamlet  and  Othello  are  so 
superior  to  Paradise  Lost,  though  that  poem  perhaps 
maintains  a  higher  level  of  beauty  than  they  do. 

Can  the  interest  proper  to  great  poems  be  distinguished 
from  that  aroused  by  imaginative  prose  ?  By  intensity  ? 
Hardly :  rather  by  quality,  by  perfection.  Poetry 
transports  us  into  its  newly  created  world  more  delicately, 
with  a  finer  respect  for  the  bloom  of  the  soul.  The 
superiority  is  of  mood  rather  than  of  power.  The  mind 
is  carried  among  objects  and  events  with  a  motion  that 
more  nearly  satisfies  innate  desire :  even  so  Zephyros 
conveyed  Psyche  from  the  piled  logs  on  the  rocky  peak 
to  a  lawn  in  the  gardens  of  Love's  house.  In  like  manner 
dancing  contents  the  body  better  than  walking  or  running 
or  drilling.  In  the  flight  of  some  birds  and  in  the  swim- 
ming of  certain  fish  we  recognise  an  ideal  smoothness  and 
continuity,  but  dancing  adds  to  this  a  conscious  ecstasy  ; 
skill  triumphs  over  known  difficulties,  elation  lifts  the 
body,  which  no  longer  merely  serves,  but  becomes  the 
disinterested  vehicle  of  the  soul,  its  partner  and  friend. 
Thus  the  movement  of  poetry  weds  the  mind's  desire. 

Wordsworth  found  fault  with  The  Ancient  Mariner 
because  the  chief  character  remains  passive,  is  acted  on 
but  does  little.  Now  perhaps  he  appealed  to  a  traditional 
error  in  thus  accounting  for  the  small  effect  produced  by 
the  Lyrical  Ballads  when  first  issued.  We  are,  I  think, 
as  a  matter  of  fact,  as  much  interested  by  what  happens 

139 


SOIVIE  SOLDIER  POETS 

to  a  man  as  by  what  he  docs.  "N^'c  do  not  understand  the 
universe  ;  tlieret'ore,  thougli  -we  contemplate  the  actions 
of  men  witli  more  intuitive  comprehension,  more  awe  and 
curiosity  is  aroused  by  the  working  of  external  agencies 
as  it  affects  men's  lives.  Science  has  not  yet  explained 
any  force,  not  even  those  which  we  intuitively  compre- 
hend because  we  feel  them  in  motion  within ;  the  imagina- 
tion therefore  freely  lends  a  conditional  credence  to  stories 
of  spirits  and  phantoms,  and  the  knowledge  that  our  for- 
bears were  fully  contented  with  them  powerfully  seconds 
their  appeal. 

Still  the  shooting  of  an  albatross  remains  a  trifling 
action  compared  with  its  results  and  with  the  length  of  the 
poem,  and  Ilart  Leap  Well  assuredly  treats  a  like  theme 
with  more  proportion.  Yet  small  actions  sometimes 
have  gigantic  effects  ;  a  sudden  shout  may  dislodge  an 
avalanche,  therefore  we  cannot  regard  such  proportion 
as  essential  to  a  work  of  art.  The  only  fault  with 
which  I  can  reproach  Coleridge's  masterpiece  was  due 
to  Wordsworth's  prompting. 

"  He  prayeth  best  who  loveth  best 
All  things  both  great  and  small : 
For  the  dear  God,  who  loveth  us. 
He  made  and  loveth  all." 

Though  these  words  come  quite  convincingly  from  the 
old  sailor,  by  their  position  they  seem  in  part  addressed 
to  us  by  the  poet,  and  acquire  a  tinge  of  aesthetic  imperti- 
nence. Besides  their  insistence  detracts  from  that  passion- 
ate fondness  for  the  Albatross  which  caused  the  lonely 
spirit  to  follow  the  ship  nine  fathom  deep,  by  treating  his 
action  as  a  cog  in  the  machinery  of  providence.  Apart 
from  this  slight  strain  introduced  at  Wordsworth's  sugges- 
tion, we  are  Hfted  and  absorbed  by  the  story  with  a  delicate 
completeness  unrivalled  by  any  poem  of  equal  or  greater 
length  since  written.  Michael  and  The  Ruined  Cottage, 
profoundly  organised  though  they  are,  attain  nothing  like 
140 


THE  BEST  POETRY 

this  felicity  of  movement.  Though  Enoch  Arden  and  The 
Ring  and  the  Book  are  as  interesting  as  novels,  they  fall 
like  novels  also,  the  one  by  lack  of  the  distinction  that  an 
utter  sincerity  gives,  the  other  by  lack  of  the  conciseness 
that  the  love  of  beauty  dictates.  Keats's  Lamia,  Arnold's 
Empedocles,  though  less  absorbing,  more  nearly  marry  a 
considerable  interest  to  a  proportionate  beauty  ;  Sohrab 
and  Rustum,  which  perhaps  does  more,  yet  remains  too 
conscious  of  Homer's  example  to  escape  a  certain  flavour 
of  pedantry.  Again,  Mr  Yeats's  dramas  succeed  in  ming- 
ling interest  and  beauty  better  than  any  of  those  by  the 
Victorian  poets  ;  though  several,  like  Browning's  Strafford, 
are  more  powerful,  or  like  Swinburne's  Atalanta,  more 
original,  or  like  Tennyson's  The  Cup,  more  theatrical. 

We,  like  the  folk  of  many  previous  ages,  have  it  dinned 
into  our  ears  that  poetry,  to  be  great,  must  treat  of  actual 
preoccupations,  and  not  harp  on  any  which  are  as  notably 
neglected  as  was  the  ideal  of  justice  in  Dante's  day.  Well, 
well,  let  us  allow  that  a  most  worthy  kind  of  people  at 
present  discuss  plans  for  mitigating  the  evils  of  social  in- 
equality.    How  does  the  best  poetry  treat  this  problem  ? 

Not  in  Lloyd  George's  way,  nor  yet  like  Mr  and  Mrs 
Webb,  nor  even  like  Bernard  Shaw.  Their  ways  are,  of 
course,  aimed  at  and  achieve  a  different  kind  of  success. 
But  do  they  as  grandly  allay  our  passions  and  restore  us 
to  as  propitious  a  frame  of  mind  ? 

The  opinions  of  Byron  and  Shelley  took  their  cue  from 
the  advanced  political  thinkers  of  that  day,  but  failed 
to  inspire  their  loftiest  verse.  Such  themes  as  personal 
guilt  and  loneliness,  or  some  woman,  some  cloud,  a  skylark 
or  the  healing  power  of  night  inspired  their  happiest 
flights.  They  chanted  freedom,  indeed,  but  are  on  this 
theme  outclassed  by  Wordsworth,  who  was  soon  to  become 
a  hopeless  reactionary.  However,  a  poet  never  praised 
for  thought  conceived  our  problem  in  very  lovely  verse, 
almost  as  we  realise  it  to-day. 

141 


SOME  SOT.DIER  POETS 

"  With  her  two  brothers  this  fair  lady  dwelt 
Enriehcd  from  ancestral  nierchancUzc, 
And  for  them  many  a  weary  liand  did  swelt 
In  toreiied  mines  and  noisy  factories. 
And  many  once  proiid-qiiiver'd  loins  did  melt 
In  blood  from  stinging  whip  ;- — with  hollow  eyes 
Many  all  day  in  dazzling  river  stood. 
To  take  the  riehor'd  driftings  of  the  flood. 

For  them  the  Ceylon  diver  held  his  breath. 
And  went  all  naked  to  the  hnngry  shark  ; 
For  them  his  ears  giish'd  blood  ;  for  them  in  death 
The  seal  on  the  cold  ice  with  piteous  bark 
Lay  full  of  darts  ;  for  them  alone  did  seethe 
A  thousand  men  in  troubles  wide  and  dark  : 
Half-ignorant,  they  turned  an  easy  wheel. 
That  set  sharp  racks  at  work,  to  pinch  and  peel. 

Why  were  they  proud  ?     Because  their  marble  founts 
Gushed  with  more  pride  than  do  a  wretch's  tears  ?  — 
Why  were  they  proud  ?     Because  fair  orange-mounts 
Were  of  more  soft  ascent  than  lazar  stairs  ?  — 
Why  were  they  proud  ?     Because  red-lined  accoimts 
Were  richer  than  the  songs  of  Grecian  years  ?  — 
Why  were  they  proud  ?   again  we  ask  aloud, 
Why  in  the  name  of  Glory  were  they  proud  ?  " 

That  question  is  so  much  more  winsome  than  an  accusa- 
tion. What  have  we,  any  of  us,  added  to  favouring  cir- 
cumstance to  warrant  pride  ?  Asked  not  in  the  name  of 
justice,  but  of  Glory.  How  universal  the  difficulty  of  a 
reply  appears  !  To  rail  at  tyrants  is  by  comparison  as 
though,  when  a  little  girl  was  naughty,  we  should  scold 
her  dolls  ;  for  kings  and  governors  are  only  the  toys  of 
that  lust  for  possessing  which  makes  us  all,  rich  and  poor 
alike,  so  negligent  of  nobler  things. 

Though  the  first  line  of  Endymion  has  become  a  pro- 
verb and  already  smells  musty,  serious  people  have  not 
acquired  the  habit  of  looking  for  truth  in  beauty,  where 
the  nearest  approach  to  it  can  be  made.     They  expect  and 

142 


THE  BEST  POETRY 

recommend  precisely  the  opposite  course,  and  approved 
Lord  Tennyson  when  in  Locksley  Hall  Sixty  Years  After 
he  set  the  turbid  accusations  of  Carlyle  and  Ruskin  to 
tuneful  numbers,  although  he  failed  of  Keats's  success. 
Whereas  a  living  poet,  never  mentioned  by  those  who 
plume  themselves  on  preoccupation  with  these  problems 
has,  I  think,  surpassed  those  slightly  rhetorical  stanzas 
in  Keats's  Pot  of  Basil,  which  had  remained  the  high- 
water  mark  of  expression  on  this  theme. 

A  vision  of  those  who  suffer  ranged  like  beggars  on 
either  side  of  the  streaming  street  of  active  life  has  come 
to  this  poet.  Like  figures  conceived  by  Rembrandt  or 
Rodin,  they  appeal  to  us  with  patience  and  resignation, 
and  he  bids  the  nimble-footed  crowd  gaze  on  these  their 
fellows  whose  feet  are  so  slow  that  from  age  to  age  they 
seem  to  have  advanced  no  more  than  statues.  For  him 
they  are  the  statues  cut  out  of  flesh  more  enduring 
than  marble,  that  in  spite  of  change  is  ever  the  same  in 
its  capacity  to  suffer. 

"  Tarry  a  moment,  happy  feet 
That  to  the  sound  of  laughter  glide  ! 
O  glad  ones  of  the  evening  street, 
Behold  what  forms  are  at  your  side  ! 

You  conquerors  of  the  toilsome  day 
Pass  by  with  laughter,  labour  done  ; 
But  these  within  their  durance  stay  ; 
Their  travail  sleeps  not  with  the  sun. 

They  like  dim  statues  without  end, 
Their  patient  attitudes  maintain  ; 
Your  triumphing  bright  course  attend. 
But  from  your  eager  ways  abstrain. 

Now,  if  you  chafe  in  secret  thought, 
A  moment  turn  from  light  distress. 
And  see  how  Fate  on  these  have  wrought. 
Who  yet  so  deeply  acquiesce. 

143 


SOME  SOLDIER  POETS 

Rcliold  them,  stricken,  silent,  weak. 
The  maimed,  the  mnte.  the  lialt.  the  blind. 
Condemned  in  liopeless  hope  to  seek 
The  thing  which  they  shall  never  find. 

They  haunt  the  shadows  of  your  ways 
In  masks  of  perishable  mould  : 
Their  souls  a  changing  flesh  arrays, 
But  they  are  changeless  from  of  old. 

Their  lips  repeat  an  empty  call. 
But  silence  wraps  their  thoughts  around. 
On  them,  like  snow,  the  ages  fall ; 
Time  muffles  all  this  transient  sound. 

When  Shalmaneser  pitched  his  tent 
By  Tigiis,  and  his  flag  unfurled, 
And  forth  his  summons  proudly  sent 
Into  the  new  unconquered  world  ; 

Or  when  with  spears  Cambyses  rode 
Through  Memphis  and  her  bending  slaves. 
Or  first  the  Tyrian  gazed  abroad 
Upon  the  bright  vast  outer  waves  ; 

When  sages,  star-instructed  men, 
To  the  young  glory  of  Babylon 
Foreknew  no  ending  ;   even  then 
Innimierable  years  had  flo^Ti, 

Since  first  the  chisel  in  her  hand 
Necessity,  the  sculptor,  took. 
And  in  her  spacious  meaning  planned 
These  forms,  and  that  eternal  look  ; 

These  foreheads,  moulded  from  afar. 
These  soft,  unfathomable  eyes. 
Gazing  from  darkness,  like  a  star  ; 
These  lips,  whose  grief  is  to  be  wise. 

144 


THE  BEST  POETRY 

As  from  the  mountain  marble  rude 
The  growing  statue  rises  fair. 
She  from  immortal  patience  he^^  ed 
The  limbs  of  ever-young  despair. 

There  is  no  bliss  so  new  and  dear. 
It  hath  not  them  far-off  allured. 
All  things  that  we  have  yet  to  fear 
They  have  already  long  endured. 

Nor  is  there  any  sorrow  more 
Than  hath  ere  now  befallen  these. 
Whose  gaze  is  as  an  opening  door 
On  wild  interminable  seas. 

O  Youth,  run  fast  upon  thy  feet. 
With  full  joy  haste  thee  to  be  filled. 
And  out  of  moments  brief  and  sweet 
Thou  shalt  a  power  for  ages  build. 

Does  thy  heart  falter  '':     Here,  then,  seek 
What  strength  is  in  thy  kind  !     With  pain 
Immortal  bowed,  these  mortals  weak 
Gentle  and  unsubdued  remain." 

That  I  think  is  first-rate  poetrJ^  It  does  not  attribute 
to  human  agency  what  possibly  lies  beyond  its  scope,  in 
order  either  to  praise  or  blame.  It  recognises  that  some 
virtues  are  almost  always  the  work  of  adversity,  others  of 
prosperity ;  some  proper  to  youth  and  health,  others  to 
age  and  suffering ;  and  it  is  thus  considerate  while  rapt 
in  an  ecstasy  of  contemplation  such  as  can  but  clothe 
itself  in  delightful  phrases  and  felicitous  images. 

To  my  mind  the  stanza  about  aged  stricken  folk  is  the 
finest  : 

"  There  is  no  bliss  so  new  and  dear, 
It  hath  not  them  far-off  allured. 
All  things  that  we  have  yet  to  fear 
They  have  already  long  endured  "  — 

K  145 


SOME  SOLDIER   POETS 

Avhile  above  all  the  others  I  prize  the  two  Hnes— 

"  She  from  immortal  patience  hewed 
The  limbs  of  ever-young  despair." 

Yet  while  I  thus  distinguish,  I  reprove  myself  for  separat- 
ing them  from  the  wave  of  five  stanzas,  of  which  they 
form  the  crest  : 

"  Since  first  the  chisel  in  her  hand 
Necessity,  the  sculptor,  took. 
And  in  her  spacious  meaning  planned 
Tliese  forms,  and  that  eternal  look  ; 

These  foreheads,  moulded  from  afar, 
These  soft,  unfathomable  eyes. 
Gazing  from  darkness,  like  a  star ; 
These  lips,  whose  grief  is  to  be  wise. 

As  from  the  mountain  marble  rude 
The  gi'owing  statue  rises  fair. 
She  from  immortal  patience  hewed 
The  limbs  of  ever-young  despair. 

There  is  no  bliss  so  new  and  dear. 
It  liath  not  them  far-off  allured. 
All  things  that  we  have  yet  to  fear 
They  have  abeady  long  endured. 

Nor  is  there  any  sorroM'  more 
Than  hath  ere  now  befallen  these. 
Whose  gaze  is  as  an  opening  door 
On  wild  interminable  seas." 

That  I  think  is  more  successful  poetry  than  any  in 
Browning's  Rabbi  Ben  Ezra  or  in  Tennyson's  Locksley 
Hall ;  nay,  more  successful  than  any  produced  by  those 
great  poets  after  the  fii-st  glorious  flush  had  paled  on  the 
forehead  of  their  youthful  genius.  Is  it  not  well  described 
by  Shelley's  line — 

146 


THE  BEST  POETRY 

"  Our   sweetest   songs   are   those   which   tell   of   saddest 
thought  "  ? 

It  is  the  work  of  Laurence  Binyon,  and  published  in  his 
London  Visions. 

Now  these  are  merely  my  opinions,  and  should  not  be 
adopted  by  you  :  nor  need  they  ever  become  yours, 
luiless  your  progress  towards  the  distant  goal  of  a 
perfect  appreciation  of  excellence  should  happen  to  lead 
you  over  the  very  same  spot  where  I  now  stand. 

Each  one  of  you  is  a  traveller  over  these  delectable 
mountains,  and  not  what  has  delighted  me  or  any  other 
pilgrim  brings  you  on  your  way  and  holds  off  fatigue  and 
depression,  but  what  delights  you.  Only  be  occupied  and 
ever  anew  eager  in  arranging  what  you  admire  by  order 
of  merit.  Examine  your  preferences,  do  not  rest  content 
with  enjoying  them,  and  you  will  grow  aware  of  niceties 
and  differences  in  what  is  admirable  that  otherwise  would 
have  escaped  your  notice.  You  will  invigorate  and 
render  rational  what  may  have  seemed  the  truly  mystical 
fascination  which  verse  exerted  over  you. 

Let  me  warn  you  against  negative  standards.  Never 
record  your  impressions  by  enumerating  faults,  as  the 
newspaper  critic  so  often  does.  Never  accept  the  absence 
of  apparent  flaws  as  proof  of  the  presence  of  excellence. 
Keep  to  the  positive  merits  and  try  to  define  them  ; 
merely  turn  away  from  what  calls  for  blame.  Disparaging 
wai-ps  the  mind  far  worse  than  over-lauding.  Above  all, 
institute  comparisons  whenever  you  find  two  poets 
treating  the  same  theme  or  using  the  same  form  with 
felicity  to  diverse  effect,  or  in  any  way  rivalling  one 
another.  Animals  see,  breathe  and  feel,  man  alone  dis- 
covers, appreciates  and  admires  ;  it  is  not  enough  to 
passively  enjoy  ;  we  must  create  order  in  our  experiences. 


147 


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